


Momma's Boy

by dweeblet, Patchykins



Series: Going, Ghosting, Gone [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Dissociation, Drama, Family Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidnapping, Mental Breakdown, Misunderstandings, Moral Dilemmas, Moving On, Off-screen Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Secret Identity, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt, Tragedy, Trans Male Character, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Villains to Heroes, ghost hunger, no pp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dweeblet/pseuds/dweeblet, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patchykins/pseuds/Patchykins
Summary: Maddie will never become inured to that odious, despicable thing that destroyed her life that night. The Wisconsin ghost was gone and Vlad was pinned between Danny’s knees. She hadn’t realized at first, what was happening, but then her friend screamed.(Ghost Hunger AU, no PP)





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Special: I blame Patchykins  
> Momma's Boy 2.0: all re-edited, revamped, and compiled into one fic!  
> The original minis will remain on Boo (Hoo) as they were when they were first posted, but future chapters will now be posted here.

Part I

 

"Your son's been keeping a secret from you, sweet Maddie.”

 

Danny wants to gag, but he doesn’t. He’s too busy focusing on how Hungry he is. It aches in his belly and plays hopscotch down his spine, standing with leaden boots on his chest and driving him  _insane_. It’s utterly intolerable, an itch he can’t scratch that sends seizing tremors over his entire body, makes colored stars dance in his vision. All he can focus on is keeping calm.

 

He vaguely registers Vlad’s continuing soliloquy, “You’ll eat your words soon enough. About that secret, though... “ He grins wickedly, at Maddie and Danny has the presence of mind to make a face, but little more. “I’m sure you’re just dying to sink your teeth into it, hmm?” Plasmius laughs, spinning in midair.  “I know Daniel is, though perhaps he’s bitten off more than he can chew.”

 

That one’s groan-worthy, though, and Danny vocalizes as much. Concentration? Broken. Worth it? To be determined. He closes his eyes and tunes out the rest of Vlad’s shitty flirting, focusing on the burning fever in his chest. It gnaws at the back of his head, trickling down his throat like vinegar. Nothing else hurts like it hurts to be Hungry. Why hadn’t he dosed up when he had the chance?

 

Because he’s an idiot, and an extremely unlucky one at that. Of all the ghost things he's imagined Vlad might have sympathy for, it's this: seeing him mock Danny's suffering just makes him feel sicker. He's even thrown their lucrative identity-protection truce straight out the window, all but parading Danny's secret in front of his  _mother_.

 

Danny watches with unfocused eyes as his mom spits at Vlad. It falls short, but he applauds her for trying. Her glare can turn diamonds runny and soft, and despite his best efforts it seems to have an effect on Vlad.

 

He’s furious, of course.

 

The elder halfa snarls, baring his stupid knockoff Dracula fangs, and tries to kiss Maddie. She’s tied to a vertical metal table, as is her son, held in an underground lab against their collective will. It’s not very romantic, so it’s not terribly unexpected when Maddie gathers her strength and bites Vlad’s lip with all her might. It’s very satisfying to watch, even half conscious, as the idiot billionaire yelps and nurses his split lip, cursing.

 

A little trickle of green ectoplasm seeps from the cut, and Danny’s sluggish heart rate must spike a solid fifty beats-per-minute. He can’t take his eyes off of it, but the lids are getting heavy. He feels saliva, the thick, slimy, ectoplasm-y kind that he only makes when he’s Hungry, gathering at the corners of his mouth, but he hasn’t the presence of mind to swallow. He can feel a duplicate of Vlad at the periphery of his ghost sense, likely in human form to play the knight in shining armor at the last moment and "save" his mother. Danny doesn't care.

 

That green on Vlad's chin is ectoplasm, ghost-blood, and that is Food. He knows, through the haze, that Food will make the Hunger go away. It’s only common sense. But how to get it? Eating, of course. Eating.

 

The straps that hold him down felt very strong before, but now he is far too Hungry to let them stop him. All it takes is a little undead push channeled into his current human form, and the bindings break easily beneath his strength.

 

The Food is making noises at the human-Mom. He doesn’t care about her right now. She is not Food, nor does she have any, and is therefore useless to him. But she is not in the way of his eating-plans, so he does not need to hurt her. He will if she tries to stop him, but he would rather avoid that. This human-Mom sometimes makes him food, or brings it home from food-places. It is not Food-food, but it is tasty and he likes to eat it.

 

He has no time for creeping, so he bunches his legs beneath him and leaps at the Food. They collide midair and Danny pins his Food beneath him, slavering. The human-Mom makes surprised noises at him, but he does not care. Can’t she see that he’s busy?

 

Danny looks down at the Food-- it seems very worried, and makes afraid whimpers at him. He snorts. It  _should_ be worried: it is Food, and he is Hungry.

 

So he eats.

 

The Food is still moving beneath him when he sinks his teeth in, but that does not matter. Sweet-cold ectoplasm rushes into his mouth, and he eagerly swallows. The cool ghost-blood soothes some of the burning ache in his belly and the stinging in his throat, but he needs more. Danny opens up a deep hole in the Food with his teeth, then sticks his clever hands inside. His fingers close on strips of soft-cool-wet Food that smells very, very good and must taste even better. He pulls it out, and his Food makes more upset sounds as he shoves it into his mouth.

 

Upset sounds are annoying, so Danny bares his teeth and growls at the stupid thing. It wilts beneath him, and only makes very small unhappy noises when he reaches inside for more.

 

Slowly, but surely, Danny stops being Hungry and starts to feel pleasantly Full. He notices the human-Mom making many loud, messy upset sounds just nearby, now that the unmoving Food is a less pressing issue. She is not in the way of his eating, though, so he does not care.

 

Wait.

 

What?

 

Reality comes crashing down like a tidal wave. Danny’s hazy vision clears and he can see Vlad beneath him, in human form, steel-blue eyes wide and horrified, breathing shallow. A gaping chunk has been torn from the junction between neck and shoulder: his suit is torn and covered in ectoplasm. And in blood.

 

And it makes his mouth water.

 

Danny screams wordlessly, flinging himself back and landing on his rump. He slips and nearly goes end-over-end because the floor and his hands and his clothes and  _everything_  is so slick with red and green and muddy brown mixing.

 

The young halfa arches his back, pivots to the side, and retches. All that comes out is slimy green-tinted bile, nothing more. His ghost half has already metabolized what he’s eaten.

 

His wavering gaze finds his mother, still tied down, staring in horror. The haunted look on her face is like a knife to the chest, but it’s one Danny knows he deserves. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out save a strangled, animal whimper.

 

She flinches at the sound, and it breaks his heart.

 

Sobs hitch in Danny’s throat. His eyelashes are stuck together with ectoplasm-- lord knows how it got there-- so his sight is compromised anyway, but he all but goes blind when his vision blurs with tears. He hugs his knees, rocking back and forth on the ground, screaming, tearing at his hair gone stiff and matted with blood of both human and ghost.

 

The noises he makes are less than human and he knows it. They’re not so much sobs as howls, liquid cries of interspersed shrieking and ghost-speak because there are no words in English or Esperanto to describe what he feels.

 

Ghost-speak has a word for this. For the ghosts that loose it, rampage without provocation, even against their peers. He has never had to use it before, not in reference to himself. Danny screams the impossible syllables until they’ve lost all civil meaning and are just grief-sounds with no real translation.

 

“Danny?” His mom finally whispers. Her voice breaks on the second syllable and the fear in her tone and in the air around her suffocates him, robs him of breath and of voice. So he just nods feebly, uncurling himself to crawl on hands and knees towards her.

 

She is shaking. Whether from fear or from effort, for resisting the urge to flinch, he does not know or care. “How? When?” She is horrified. So is he.

 

“Mom,” he rasps. His voice is hoarse and barely above a whisper, but it is his own. He is in control. “Mom. Mom. Mom.” He repeats the word, her de facto name, like a prayer. Mom always makes things better. She always has. She won’t this time. Danny starts to cry anew at that thought.

 

He had really wanted to tell her and Dad, eventually. When he would be ready and cleaned up and his parents would be adequately eased into it and Jazz would have his back. His mother, who hates ghosts, has just seen him for what he is. She has seen him at his worst, and most honest, state of being.

 

Danny’s life is  _over_. Even if she accepts him his mother will never be able to look at him the same way ever again. She will always flinch when he moves too fast and she will always cower when he raises his voice no matter how much both of them wish she wouldn’t. Everything is ruined. Danny wants to die for real.

 

His mom is crying. Under her breath he hears her beg to the God she doesn’t believe in that this is all a bad dream, that she wants to go home. She wants to go home, and so does Danny.

 

He crawls tentatively through the mess of gore he’s made, not caring as it stains the knees of his jeans or the sleeves of his hoodie. He stops in front of his mom, who is breathing hard as he moves shakily to his feet. Danny’s legs feel like jello. They wobble beneath him as he reaches for the straps pinning his mother to the table, and he stumbles, clutching her arm for balance. She tenses beneath his hand, and he draws hastily away.

 

She seems surprised when he breaks the straps and retreats a few steps back. He is surprised when she calls his name. “Danny, sweetie.” It is in that tender mom-voice that is usually reserved for very Bad Days that he used to have when he got tired of smiling and wished he was dead. He had stopped wishing that after the Accident.

 

He cocks his head at her, wilting under her gaze. “Mom?”

 

“Come here,” she says, and steps towards him. He shakes in place, nodding, then launches himself at his mother. He buries his face into her chest and breathes in her scent, the faint sciencey ozone smell layered with chocolate and perfume. Her warm arms are around him, hands stroking his hair and rubbing his back. Danny can feel her shaking against him, but she does not flinch or run away.

 

This is more than he could have ever hoped for. She has seen and she still  _loves_ him. This is amazing. He sobs quietly into her shoulder, garbled words of apology and of gratitude spilling from his bloodied lips, muffled by her clothes but still clear in his adoring tone.

 

He doesn’t hear the whir of a charging ecto-weapon until it’s too late. A lipstick blaster, the kind his mom always carries, is pressed into his hair on the side of his head, where it is matted with blood.

 

“Now tell me what you’ve done with my Danny.”


	2. II

Part II

 

 

Maddie has the blaster pressed against her baby’s head. The glossy dark hair is buzzed very short here, the way her son likes it, but that does not stop it from being matted with the blood of her friend. She bites back a sob at the sight of caked-on gore clinging to Danny’s scalp, gumming up his long, shaggy bangs.

 

“Now tell me what you’ve done with my Danny,” she demands. She is trying her very best to sound authoritative, but her voice betrays her. It comes out as a wavering plea. Maddie can feel the thing that is maybe-Danny stiffen beneath her grip. Its borrowed face falls, pale eyes wide, bloodied mouth gaping.

 

“Mom,” it begs in Danny’s nasal tenor, “I can explain, honest-” it is trembling violently, mouth working helplessly as it-he struggles for words. “I wanted- I never wanted this!”

 

She sets her jaw. “Please don’t lie to me.” She powers up the blaster-

 

And then the  _thing_ that is not at all Danny goes intangible, like a ghost, and passes right through her. Maddie gasps, breath catching in her throat as the ice-water sensation of its touch cuts through her core. It stumbles back in that stolen body of her son, high-noon eyes suddenly blazing with unearthly green energy.

 

On instinct, she lunges, arms outstretched, but it phases down through the floor and disappears.

 

Maddie stares for what feels like a long time, feeling the cold spot that lingers in her gut throb in time with her gasping breaths. She cries ugly, heaving sobs. That monster has taken her baby away. Her weeping only falters when she hears a low groan from across the room.

 

Oh, God--  _Vlad_. He is trembling, shaking uncontrollably, hot red blood and bile bubbling up in his mouth. His steely grey eyes are glassy and unfocused with pain as he splutters and gasps. He’s going into shock, she realizes. Acting fast, Maddie skids to her knees aside her old college friend. In any other circumstance she would be loath to touch him so freely, but he hasn’t the presence of mind to pine after her now.

 

She quickly pulls his prone form onto its side, tipping his head so that he won’t inhale his own red-streaked vomit. There is nothing to prop up his legs with so she just holds them on her knees, hoping to push some far-off blood back to his heart. Despite her efforts, his skin is grey and clammy to the touch, slick with cool sweat and gooseflesh.

 

The huge, gaping hole in his neck is still gushing. Maddie can see where teeth shredded skin, where it hangs from glistening strips of exposed muscle in ragged chunks. She can see gnawed tendons barely holding it all together, turned thick by congealing blood.

 

Maddie can only watch as Vlad’s labored breaths become more and more irregular, sightless eyes darting wildly around. She soothes him as best she can, in a low, trembling voice. She doesn’t have a phone-- nothing to communicate with.

 

Maybe Vlad does. It pains her to drop his legs, but if she stays still there will be no chance. Her shaking hands probe his pockets, desperate for anything that might be of use in contacting an ambulance.

 

She pulls away empty-handed.

 

The lab is silent save Vlad’s choking breaths and Maddie’s own stifled sobs. She freezes when the scruffy black head of Danny’s body phases up through the floor in front of them, little freckled nose just barely peeking up over the tile. His eyes are normal, china blue and glistening with tears, but she can see faint green lights dancing rings round his irises.

 

Vlad, barely conscious, twitches and shies away as Maddie’s possessed son rises the rest of the way up through the floor. He alights without sound, padding hesitantly over the paneled floor. His ratty red sneakers are dark and muddied with blood: he leaves thin crimson footprints on the white metal as he stalks predatorily closer.

 

This is not the Danny she knows. His ice-blue eyes are unreadable and hard, face schooled into disparaging neutrality. The possessed boy tips his head in that eerie way that animals do, eyes darting between Vlad’s still-weeping wounds and the lipstick blaster resting on Maddie’s thigh.

 

“Mo-Maddie,” says the boy. That breathy-light voice is so painfully  _Danny_ , strained and afraid and crackling pitifully in his throat. “I… Please let me help.”

 

Maddie shifts away. Her gloved fingers are slick with Vlad’s blood and the long-gone Wisconsin Ghost’s ectoplasm-- they mix into something caustic and pungent-- but she maintains a firm grip on her only weapon. “You’re not Danny, right?” She can’t stand the shaking in her voice, but she can’t bear the thought. Danny. Raw  _human meat_ between his teeth, being torn from a still-writhing victim. Her Danny would never do something so violent, so needlessly cruel. He would be weeping when he is returned to his own body.

 

At length the specter-in-Danny’s-body speaks with that horribly borrowed voice. “I’m sorry,” it says. It looks like her baby, but it isn’t. Maddie needs to remember that as it slowly lowers its human puppet into a crouching position, limber legs tucked neatly beneath it. “I-” It makes a tiny squeaking sound in Danny’s throat, cutting itself off. “I’m so sorry,” and now it is crying, even harder than she is.

 

It is doing exactly what Danny does when he’s deeply upset-- biting its lip, screwing up its face as it tries and fails desperately to withhold the tears. Small, wheezing huffs shake its chest and shoulders, and it drops further to its knees. Tears are streaming steadily down Danny’s blood-streaked cheeks, pooling at the grimacing corners of his mouth and seeping into the filthy cotton of his hoodie sleeves as he scrubs frantically at his cheeks.

 

“I didn’t w-want this, ‘ama,” maybe-Danny insists through his sobs. Danny only calls her mama when he’s truly distraught. If this ghost isn’t a stellar actor… “Please let m-me help. I won’t t-t-touch him without your say-so, b-but  _please_ let me h-he-help.” His watery blue eyes are wide and trimmed in red, pleading without words as he kneels.

 

Maddie swallows the whimper swelling in her throat. Why would the ghost do this? Does it just want to get closer to its food source? Does it need Vlad alive for something? She considers her options carefully, studying her son’s body for anything that might give it away.

 

“Okay,” she relents, almost without her consent. The word slips past her lips on some strange impulse-- she knows it’s weak, and it’s risky, but she doesn’t want Danny to cry. This is Danny’s face. He is worrying his lip so hard it’s bleeding and dribbling down his scraped chin; his blood is only half-dried, dark and glittering, no luminous green ectoplasm to be found.

 

Tears marathon down her cheeks, propelled by only a blink. Maddie reaches numbly up to wipe them away as Danny crawls closer and kneels over Vlad. His slim bony hands are moving tremulously over the older man’s ruined suit, peeling fingers ghosting over the blood-soaked satin, picking nervously at his shredded lapels.

 

His startling blue gaze darts up-- he’s noticed Maddie watching. She considers averting her eyes and pretending not to have stared, but instead makes eye contact. “Don’t be scared,” Danny says. Despite the underlying command, his voice is soft and feeble. He reminds Maddie in that moment of a little kid playing soldier, with all the blood on his young face, tears in his hoodie, teen fervor totally absent in his quivering posture.

 

“Okay,” she says again, trying her hardest to stay calm. In her mind she turns over all the things that maybe-Danny might do. She knows he is clumsy and sometimes impulsive, so maybe he has first-aid on him? Unlikely, Maddie decides. His hoodie pocket is full of holes that he likes to stick his fingers through, and the threadbare jacket isn’t nearly enough to disguise anything of value.

 

On the other hand, her traitorous mind suggests, maybe Maddie is wrong and that is  _not_ Danny and the ghost will sink her son’s stolen teeth deep into Vlad’s exposed throat and finish the job it started. She tightens her grip on the lipstick blaster. Maybe-Danny seems acutely aware of this, tensing as she does.

 

Maddie watches mutely as it sighs through Danny’s teeth. Her son’s palms flare with soft blue light, wispy cool energy that dances easily between his fingers, lingering easily around his knobbly left ring finger that had broken and has healed crooked. He runs his energized hands carefully over Vlad’s injuries. The cool, soothing blue seeps into the cuts and spreads in spiderweb patterns over each place where flesh and skin has been torn away.

 

The temperature drops significantly, but Danny doesn’t seem to notice. Maddie stiffens in place, fighting back a shiver at the sudden chill. A strange smell like winter air and ozone fills the air, which crackles with electric energy. She  _knows_ that blue-- it’s icy and distantly soothing, and it’s what the Phantom had used to try and heal a little girl after battling the shadow-woman and her minion.

 

Danny draws away, shaking violently. His hands are limp and twitching as he slumps backwards. The soft blue light slowly fades, condensing into faintly luminous vapor that disappears into Vlad’s slightly parted mouth. As it does, his pain-creased face relaxes some, and his breathing slowly but surely evens out, a little shallow, but undoubtedly better than the alternative.

 

“What did you do?” Maddie brings herself to ask. Danny’s ashen face is slick with sweat, and he’s panting from the exertion. Without speaking, the boy jerks his head towards Vlad’s chest as it rises and falls, labored but steady.  _See for yourself_.

 

Dread coils in her gut like an iron snake as she leans over her college friend. Maddie curls her gloved fingers as carefully as she can into the blood-soaked satin of Vlad’s suit, peeling the wet fabric gingerly away from the gaping lacerations not-Danny’s rampage has made. Blood pools in the folds of his jacket, mixed with muddy green in some places, and collects in still-warm puddles at the hollow of his throat. It’s a risky move, but she reaches out to probe the site of the worst injury.

 

There are still cuts and bruises on his sharp cheeks, and blood from his probably-broken nose has clumped up in his salt-and-pepper beard, but he seems otherwise unharmed. Ragged, puckered skin gives under her fingers, but holds, like a scar long since healed over.

 

She stops her examination then, peering expectantly up at Danny, whose eyes are tightly closed. The pieces click together in her mind.

 

He looks like he might be sleeping against the wall, albeit much less peacefully than Vlad. His face is still scrunched up and his breaths come slow and shallow. Maddie watches his chest slowly fall, expecting another inhalation to follow, but there is none. Danny isn’t breathing.

 

But his hands are moving. She watches his fingers curl around thick slimy ectoplasm, scooping it up from the floor. He brings those fingers to his lips and sucks on them greedily, dribbling through his teeth. This isn’t Danny. This  _filthy lying ghost is not Danny_.

 

“Stop that!” Maddie snaps, rolling to her feet. On impulse she fires the lipstick blaster. The pale green projectile whizzes past Danny’s head as he ducks to the side, eyes still closed. A fresh round of tears spills from beneath his lashes, but Maddie pays them no mind-- it’s all a lie.

 

He backs up on his knees, eyes now wide and electric green staring up at her. “No,” he says meekly. “Don’t shoot. It’s me, mom. Danny.” His hands are up in a universal gesture of surrender, shaking as he cowers before her.

 

Maddie screams and fires the blaster again. This time she strikes him solidly in the shoulder, on the same side he got Vlad. She waits, expecting the ghost overshadowing Danny to be forced out and dissipate, but nothing happens. Danny just stares at her, gaping, as the wound bubbles and steams. The plasma has already cauterized it, but the burn is severe and blistering.

  
Danny  _howls_ , an unearthly wailing sound, and phases down through the floor.

 

* * *

 

 

She’s lucky there  _is_ a phone somewhere in Vlad’s stupid mansion.

 

He is stretched out across the backseat of the GAV with Maddie sitting over him, gingerly bandaging his remaining wounds. Grudgingly, she will admit that the ghost did a good job of healing Vlad, but he needs to be returned to Fentonworks as soon as possible to make sure he hasn’t been poisoned or infected with something.

 

Jack drives slightly less erratically than usual, uncharacteristically silent the entire way home. Maddie herself is in something like psychological shock, the image of Danny’s blazing possessed eyes spinning in her periphery. She tucks her horror and grief away, pulling on her clinical scientist’s mask as she binds and cleans Vlad’s cuts.

 

She will destroy that ghost that took her son, her baby.

 

Together she and Jack carry Vlad into the house, laying him carefully on the living room sofa. It is late now; the sky is city blue-black and dotted with sparse white stars. Dismal grey clouds blot out the watery beams of the moon, but the streetlamps spit warm yellow light back up in their stead. Everything sounds like water in Maddie’s ears, but they must make a lot of noise while moving Vlad, because a sleepy Jazz stumbles down the stairs in a tizzy. She waves her phone flashlight around, and Maddie finds herself proud to note the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick she drags sleepily behind her.

 

She is equally proud when Jazz shoots Vlad a brusque look-- she’s certainly considering using him as a target.

 

“What’s going on?” The girl asks, yawning. “Why’re you covered in…” Jazz squints, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Is that  _blood_?”

 

Maddie nods numbly. “Don’t worry, sweetie. It’s Vlad’s, and he’s okay now.” She watches her daughter’s freckled face pinch in a reluctantly sympathetic expression.

  
“Where’s Danny?”


	3. III

Part III

 

Danny is barreling intangibly through pitch-dark layers of concrete foundation and ashy earth. He can smell the oil and the city filth interrupting the organic tang of compost and pine needles as he passes through pipelines and sewers. Even then, the quasi-industrial stench of nowhere, Wisconsin can’t overpower the sting of blood and ectoplasm in his nose.

 

He breaks the surface with a gasp of air he doesn’t need, vision a haze of green and grey in the night. The burn on his shoulder is already cauterized by plasma, already scarring over, but Danny can feel the wind dig its nails into the open blisters as he flies low against the treeline.

 

The throbbing pain in his shoulder is nothing compared to the tightness in his chest, like a boa constrictor is hugging his necrotic lungs and digging its teeth into his sluggish heart. He is little more than a faintly whimpering streak of green-and-white against the dusky country sky.

 

Amity Park is a fair distance over state lines from Vlad’s extravagant chalet, but with a top speed clocking near two-hundred miles per hour as of his most recent training session, Danny is there in what feels like an instant. Training session. Doing stunts on dares from Tucker. Less than a month ago he had been dealing with brilliantly inane things like those. Will he ever do that again? His stomach turns and growls as he alights on a streetlamp, breathless from his crying.

 

Danny blinks the tears from his lashes, scrubbing at his face with his knuckles. He only succeeds in smearing blood on his cheek to mix with the ectoplasm already drying there. He can’t be seen like this. His chest only tightens further as he gasps and sputters. He wants to throw up, but only ropes of briny saliva escape him.

 

There is no way in Hell he can possibly go to Sam or Tucker right now-- they’ll ask questions. Danny doesn’t think he can possibly answer them in a state like this, and he knows that his friends won’t drop the subject if he asks them to. They care far too much. Retreating to the Ghost Zone crosses his mind, but he quickly discards the idea. Despite everything, he has enemies there, and his lenience makes him a target. Danny can’t handle that, not now.

 

Briefly, he considers flying to a residential area and knocking on a door for help. Someone like Dash or Paulina, dedicated ‘Phans,’ would be more than willing to help him clean up and recover. But that doesn’t sit well with him either: to see their hero covered in gore will raise questions, start rumors. That isn’t a risk Danny has the emotional or mental capacity to handle right now should things get out of hand.

 

He is left with one dismal option: sleep in the street. Stay as Phantom and perch in a tree, perhaps, stay invisible and silent until morning. Danny even has the means to squat in an apartment or hotel if he so dares, but the idea of taking boarding without permission just makes him feel worse. Using his powers to steal isn’t in his nature, especially now, even if a small part of him feels that he deserves someplace safe and dry to sleep.

 

Sniffling piteously, Danny pushes off from the street light, instinctively fading from the visible spectrum as he flies. His Hunger has been quelled for the moment by going after Vlad, but healing him immediately after leaves his roiling stomach feeling empty and hot. He’ll need to hunt soon if he wants to stay calm, but Amity Park is much more densely populated by small, mindless spirits that Danny doesn’t feel too bad about eating, so he’s much safer than he was in Madison.

 

In that regard Danny feels safe, but that is regrettably the most he can claim. He ducks into an alley between two houses, only a street over from Fentonworks. He can feel the buzz of the portal in the air, smells the distinct ozone-and-lime stink of fresh ectoplasm on the wind. It is risky to settle so close to his… family’s home, but the protective, possessive little voice in his hindbrain refuses to leave his haunt behind without a fight.

 

Besides, he needs to make sure Jazz is okay, and Mom is okay, and even that Vlad is okay. Especially Vlad, Danny decides, guilt prickling like hot needles in his chest. He doesn’t hate the older halfa, not really. They bristle and snap their teeth at every chance meeting, but in the end they have never  _really_ tried to hurt one another. Not seriously, anyway.

 

Until now.

 

That self-loathing horror sits like a coal in Danny’s belly, burning a hole through the lining of his gut. He and Vlad have always walked a razor’s edge between half-playful scrimmaging and actual ill-meaning altercations. He has accepted this from very early on: it’s part of the job description to get a into a little donnybrook every now and then. Until now, though, Danny has never imagined that  _he himself_ would be the one to cross the line and cause lasting harm to his opponent.

 

He wants to stop thinking about it, so he pushes the remaining Hunger to the forefront of his brain. His body moves on autopilot, conscious thought easing into a soothing bath of mock-sleep. Danny can only liken it to the early morning haze during which one is not yet awake, but just aware enough to know  _quiet_ and  _safe_ and  _warm_ nestled into the covers, only this time he knows  _Hungry_ and  _scared_ and  _alone_.

 

But to his muddled brain things like fear and helplessness are nebulous concepts upon which he has no solid grasp. Hunger is all that is concrete in his world now, so Danny coils his spectral tail beneath him and shoots up over the buildings. His shoulder is still stinging, but the pain has ebbed somewhat, and he pushes himself a little harder. From his eagle-eyed vantage point above the streets, he can see the faint green-blue glow of unwary prey as it floats aimlessly over a house.

 

It is a small, mindless spirit-- little more than a clump of ambient ectoplasm that has gathered and condensed into a faintly blobbish shape. It has no distinct mouth, and its eyes are faintly indented pits in the jelly of its ectoplasmic flesh-- laughably easy Food to sneak up on.

 

Danny dives for it, and his teeth close around its bulbous head before it can so much as squeak. He carries his kill back over the street, to the alley by Fentonworks. The tiny spirit’s slimy body is still twitching and cool in his mouth, and it spasms briefly as he drops it onto the pavement. Immediately, he braces his Food with his two arms, pressing it hard against the filthy concrete, tail whipping dangerously as he buries his nose into the gooey meal before him.

 

He slurps up gluey ectoplasm, tearing away strips of thin, membranous skin and swallowing them whole. He takes more bites, lapping at the pooling ghost-blood until there is nothing left but a sticky stain on the pavement. That’s better, Danny notes, allowing some small consciousness to resurface in his satisfaction, but the throbbing tightness of horror in his chest returns. He shoves his Hunger back up, willing himself to drown.

 

If he keeps on like this, he knows he will never stop being Hungry, and he will stop being a halfa and just be Hungry. All the time. But it hurts to be Full and to have a clear head, and stubbornly, stupidly, Danny refuses to think on it.

 

There is another place that has Food. The buzzing-place with the portal is an option, but it reeks of chemicals and ghost-hate and unhappy humans: he does not want to go there. So he goes to the next best place, a human-lair that houses a human called Tucker who is Danny’s friend. Ha. So many human-things.

 

Tucker keeps Food in his wall for Danny for when he is desperately Hungry, in case the buzzing-place is not safe to eat at, or if he cannot catch anything. Privately, Danny thinks this is a very nice thing for Tucker to do, because sometimes wild Food is not easy to find and even harder to catch, especially when he is very, very Hungry. So he flies in through the roof, intangible.

 

His friend is sleeping soundly in his nest in his tiny lair, which is inside the big human-lair that holds all his family. Danny thinks that Tucker is not very good at protecting his territory, because he does not even stir when the halfa invades his domain and sticks an intangible hand through the wall to take his Food.

 

It is in a container which is made out of glass, with a popping-cork lid that Danny can pull out with his teeth. The plastic crunches loudly between his incisors as he tears it away and tips the bottle up against his lips. Cool, dense Food slides easily down his throat, making his eyes feel weak and heavy-lidded. His belly feels so, so Full, but Danny tries very desperately to keep the Hunger between himself and his hurt feelings. It doesn’t really work.

 

The throbbing hurt in his chest is back in full force as Danny watches his best friend sleep soundly. Tight ringlets of short black curls, usually tucked beneath his beret, are splayed out beneath his head like a glossy halo. The halfa hums softly, no longer muddle-brained, but still not quite awake, and floats over the human boy where he sleeps in his tangle of blankets. His chest rises and falls steadily, strong brown hands curled over the edge of the comforter. He slides in against Tucker’s side without thinking, tucking his silvery head under the other boy’s arm. The human mumbles in his sleep, but does not wake as Danny curls his tail around his legs, more for his own comfort than for Tucker’s.

 

He is glad that the human reflexes of tear production and diaphragmal spasms are ones he can suppress.

 

At 3:43 AM, Tucker’s sudden spike in heart rate jerks Danny from his sleep. He jolts upright, lip curled and a growl bubbling in his throat to scare off whatever has frightened his friend. He whips around, tail coiled protectively around the now-upright Tuck’s bare chest.

 

“Danny?” The boy breathes. The halfa turns to face him, willing himself to relax as he realizes there is no threat at all. It stings to see that Tucker is afraid of  _him_ , but as his head clears it occurs to Danny that he must be quite a sight.

 

He hums a soft affirmative and drifts off of Tuck’s bed, phasing through the wall into the bathroom. He sees himself in the mirror and freezes for a long moment at what he finds-- silvery hair matted into stiff spikes by mixed ectoplasm and blood, dry leaves and peels of bark clinging to top of the shaggy mess. His mouth is painted at the corners by a muddy green-brown, dried in flaking lines where it has dripped down onto his chin. Danny’s face looks gaunt and pale, distinctly corpse-blue in the dim early-morning light. His milky green irises are ringed in stark blood-red, and not the kind from sleeplessness.

 

Tucker is standing behind him, Danny knows because he can hear his bare footsteps on the creaky hardwood floor and the way the soles of his feet go  _pap pap pap_ on the bathroom tile. He can hear his best friend’s stuttering heartbeat as he mumbles Danny’s name.

 

“Hey,” Danny says. He turns on the tap without turning around, and dunks his head under it. Cold water cascades over his filthy hair and drips in numbing rivulets down onto his nose, but he doesn’t feel any cleaner. Droplets pool in the folds of his high-necked hazmat suit, sneaking down against his throat and onto his chest.

 

He turns around slowly, hesitant to meet Tuck’s dark-eyed gaze. “Are you okay, dude?” He asks.

 

Danny can’t help but snort at that, rolling his eyes. “Peachy,” he deadpans, but without real bite.

 

Tuck’s mouth twitches as though he’s halfway to smiling but too nervous to finish. “Sorry,” he all but whispers. “Standard question.”

 

“I know.”

 

Uneasy silence swells between them as they stand, and float, respectively, in the dim bathroom. The dawn sky outside is grey-white and cold, casting watery beams of light in through the little window above and to the left of the toilet.

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tucker asks. His hand is warm and solid on Danny’s shoulder, squeezing gently. When Danny shakes his head he withdraws, shifting nervously in place. “Do you want to use my shower?” He ventures, wringing his hands against his chest. When Danny nods he cracks a vague smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Okay, champ. I’ll go grab you a towel. Know how to work the tap?”

 

Another wordless nod. Danny can’t bring himself to speak past the lump in his throat. “Okay,” Tucker says tenderly, as though his friend might shatter should he speak too harshly. Maybe he will. “I’ll go grab that and some spare clothes for you.”

 

His heartbeat is too fast for him to be calm, and the very distinct Tucker-beat of blood is muffled by the walls as he heads back into his room. With a thought Danny returns to human form and begins to strip, peeling blood-crusted clothes from his body until they’re a Christmas-colored pile  against the rim of the tub. He stares at himself in the mirror for what feels like a long time, taking in all the little divots in his flesh where mixed ectoplasm and blood has pooled and dried into sticky brown clumps.

 

Danny very nearly wrenches the shower tap out of the wall when he makes to turn it on. When the metal creaks dangerously beneath his grip, he stops, bloody hands shaking uncontrollably. Taking a deep steadying breath, he turns the knob until the water comes out strong and warm from the showerhead. He steps over the rim of the tub, pushing the curtain aside with utmost care, suddenly hyperaware of his own strength.

 

The congealed blood on his skin all but melts beneath the hot spray of water, fleeing in dark rivulets that trickle with the rest of the water over his pale flesh. The red and brown and green stands out in sharp relief against his nakedness, and it only makes him feel dirtier when they disappear into the shower drain. Disposing of evidence, a nasty little piece of him supposes. Because he is a criminal now.

 

He is all but numb to the way the water attacks his still-raw burns and stinging cuts. He reaches awkwardly for the washcloth on its hook on the wall, saturating it with Tucker’s sharp-scented body wash. It smells like tangy fruit and the ocean and sandalwood, and it makes Danny’s eyes water as it mixes with the iron stink of blood. He doesn’t stop scrubbing even as the soap bites at his open wounds, moving with greater and greater vigor as yet more muddy blood peels away from his skin.

 

It’s not enough. He bites back a half-screaming whimper as he digs his nails into the burn on his shoulder. He doesn’t stop until dark coppery green starts to ooze thickly from the furrows he draws like tar. It is cold under his fingernails, and stains them nacreous black. Vlad has red blood. Why doesn’t he?

 

In the back of his mind he knows the answer-- something sciencey and convoluted regarding his current stage of development in relation to Vlad’s upon receiving his powers, et cetera ad infinitum. The portal was too big, and he is too small- Danny doesn’t really care about DNA bonding and mutations and genetic variability. None of those things matter to him because he feels dirty in a way showers can’t resolve. He’s irredeemably filthy, inside and out.

 

Vlad, the conniving bastard, can officially say he has greater right to Danny’s family than Danny does. Vlad, the scheming, manipulative creep that he is, is still more human and more inherently  _good_ than Danny is. He can’t stop thinking about it. Danny numbly coaxes the stiff blood from his matted dark hair, wincing as the heavily stained water trickles over his nose and clings to his lip.

 

Now that they’re clean and unobstructed, he can feel his wounds repairing themselves. The raw burned skin begins to knit itself back together, while the cuts and bruises are little more than memories. He stares vacantly at the plain white-grey tile of the wall, biting his lip. Why is he healing? Why does he deserve to heal? Why must his body do this when it’s so  _inhuman_?

 

On impulse, Danny curls his fingers against the soft skin of his inner forearm until it breaks. More dark not-blood spills thickly from the cuts as he drags his fingers further. He can’t withhold his breathless cry of pain as his supernatural body tries and fails to heal around his nails. Reluctantly, he withdraws. The deep cuts are little more than faint pink lines against the green-veined white flesh of his wrist.

 

He needs to do something more. Something for what he’d done. Shakily, he turns off the tap and steps out of the tub. He opens the drawer where he knows Tuck keeps first aid and cotton swabs and needles and thread. And scissors.

 

Danny breaks them in half and stares at the weapon in his hand. He drags the sharp edge over his palm and watches dumbly as the cut closes again. Blood is roaring in his ears and drowning out everything else. He needs it to stop.

 

“ _Danny_!” He jerks and drops the blade. He can’t quite make out Tucker’s racing heartbeat over the pounding in his head. Danny chokes. This is a stupid idea. This is dumb. His legs crumple beneath him and he buries his face in his hands.

 

His body is wracked with involuntary sobs that constrict his chest and steal his fleeting breaths. He whimpers unintelligibly through the lattice of his fingers, grasping desperately at the cotton hem of his best friend’s shorts.

 

Tuck helps him to his feet and drapes a beach towel over his quaking shoulders. Danny follows placidly as his best friend’s warm brown hands push him into a sitting position on his bed. He can’t see through the haze of tears, can’t hear over his own gasping sobs. Tucker is rubbing soothing circles on his back through the towel, calloused fingers carding gently through his hair.

 

“Easy, easy,” Danny hears him say. “It’s gonna be okay, champ. It’s okay.”

  
He shakes his head, but can’t bring himself to speak. It’s not okay. Nothing is okay right now. Danny screams into Tucker’s chest, whimpering and sobbing until his emotions are spent.

 


	4. IV

Part IV

 

The thumping and slamming of the front door coaxes Jazz awake sometime close to three in the morning. Groaning, she swings her legs over the side of her bed, untangles herself from her ridden-up nightshirt, and stumbles out into the hall with a yawn.

 

She pivots to grab her phone for light, and makes her way to Danny’s room with a scowl on her face. It isn’t unusual for her brother to be up at times like this, fighting ghosts or something like that, but Jazz wishes through her irritation that he would be a little quieter about it.

 

His bedroom door is ajar, and she pushes it open. The window is shut, all lights are off-- it is pitch-dark save the dim early light and the faint green-blue shine of the star stickers on his ceiling. Jazz is careful to poke at his blankets in the dark, in case he’s stumbled upon accidental invisibility. There is no cold body beneath the sheets.

 

Jazz huffs and gets down on her knees to peer under the bed, exasperation changing to a tight spark of concern in her chest. He hasn’t phased through the mattress, either. She waves and flails in hopes of finding a chilly spot where her ghost brother is sleep-floating, or something, but comes back empty-handed and anxious.

 

Another series of bangs and clatters sounds from downstairs, and Jazz can’t help but tense, anxiety knotting in her gut. She’s done her best to distance herself from her parents’ obsessive ghost-hunting, but having family with a myriad of spectral enemies tends to quicken the reflexes on principal of simply being involved.

 

She gropes frantically in the dark till her fingers meet the rubber-wrapped handle of an aluminum baseball bat. Briefly, she wonders why exactly her brother had it under his bed, but upon closer consideration this really shouldn’t surprise her. If the trend continues, Jazz is almost certain it has the word ‘Fenton’ on it. As stupid as that may be, she doesn’t find it in her to do more than roll her eyes. The weapon is sturdy, and she knows how to use it if need be. That’s all that matters.

 

Mounting curiosity makes her brave. Carefully, the teen creeps along the hall, flashlight in one hand and bat in the other. In the dimness she can make out her father’s broad-shouldered figure, and her mother’s hippy curves not far behind. They’re carrying something, some _one_ , into the house.

 

It doesn’t seem to be an actively dangerous situation, Jazz thinks, so she turns on her flashlight and stumbles downstairs. A growl rises in her throat at who they’re holding. Vengeful protectiveness comes alight in her chest and makes her fume.

 

She considers it an accomplishment of herculean proportions that she doesn’t throw her bat right down on the unprotected groin of Vlad Masters when she sees him. Her parents are lowering him onto the sofa, wrapping him in a sheet.

 

“What’s going on?” She asks through a yawn. Despite her upset, she’s still exhausted.

 

Jazz can see something strange, though, and her heart does a funny little jig as she leans over the stairs to see. The cream-colored linen is turning dark, and she squints to make out what’s on it. Something with a shiny red sheen that drips from the folds of a torn-up suit jacket. Her stomach is in knots as she speaks.

 

“Why’re you covered in... “ She stops to stare a little longer, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Just to make sure she’s seeing things right. “Is that  _blood_?”

 

Jazz stares incredulously as her parents lower Vlad onto the sofa, helping him into a sitting position. He is covered in blood but seems almost entirely unharmed. His unfocused eyes are rolling wildly, and his usually-strong hands are shaking as he grips the flimsy sheet Maddie has procured from the closet to protect the couch.

 

It’s really pitiful. She doesn’t even need the baseball bat, aluminum and everything.

 

“Don’t worry, sweetie.” Jazz blinks owlishly at her mother, fear prickling along her spine. Maddie’s face is ashen and damp; the sheen on her cheeks is most definitely from tears. “It’s Vlad’s, and he’s okay now.”

 

The teen nods hesitantly. As much as she dislikes him, the billionaire looks supremely shaken up. That digs a pit of dread in her belly: she knows how strong he is when he wants to be. It must be something really bad, if the amount of blood is any indication. He’s smeared it in handprints on the sofa, and it’s drying on her parents’ clothes.

 

There’s just  _so much_ of it. Jazz feels sick.

 

“Where’s Danny?” She blurts out. He  _isn’t_ in the house, but Vlad  _is_ , and that is most certainly not normal.

 

Evidently, that question is a bombshell.  Her father looks concerned, and a little lost as he lets his old college friend squeeze his big meaty hand.

 

Her mother, on the other hand, looks totally stricken, wide-eyed and white-faced with abject horror. Vlad’s clouded eyes are just wide as he shakes, looking completely and utterly flabbergasted.

 

“He’s not in his room?” Maddie asks. She doesn’t really sound surprised, in fact, she seems to have adopted some steely sort of resignation that makes Jazz uneasy.

 

“No.”

 

“I didn’t think so,” she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Go get some towels and a hot washcloth-- we need to clean Vladdie up before he gets an infection. Jack,” she turns to her husband and places a hand on his forearm.

 

“Some fresh clothes, please? Yours will do fine.” She leans over and begins to peel the remains of the elder halfa’s blood-soaked suit from his heaving chest. “I’ll explain everything once we’re all settled.”

 

Reluctantly, Jazz obeys, turning around and heading to the laundry room. She pulls towels from their pile atop the dryer, deliberately picking colored beach towels and rattier specimens that no one will mind having to throw away afterwards. After that she reaches into the cabinet for a fresh washcloth, and turns on the tap.

 

Her head is spinning. A large part of her knows that Danny is involved, and given  _Vlad’s_ condition, she is rightfully concerned. Is he okay? Alive? If something has shown up that’s strong enough to cut Vlad Plasmius to ribbons, leave him a whimpering mess, what on Earth might it be doing to  _Danny_? Her throat feels tight at the thought. Jazz shoves it away.

 

The water is more than hot enough, so she soaks the towel and brings the lot of it back into the living room.

 

Her parents are in the careful process of propping Vlad up into a sitting position. His suit jacket has been peeled from his heaving chest, discarded in tatters on the living room floor. His hard tanned chest is absolutely ravaged-- rows of parallel cuts like animal scratches, dark blooming bruises, and a risen patch of angry yellow-pink that looks like a half-healed burn. There is a divot at the joining of neck and shoulder that is definitely not a part of his musculature: Vlad is  _missing flesh_.

 

Jazz feels a little sick, not only at the sight of his wounds but the idea of what has made them. All this, done to Vlad Plasmius, who has a twenty-year head start? What about young, inexperienced Danny Phantom?

 

Each of Vlad’s anxious breath pushes iron beads of blood from some of the most savage cuts, and they drip down to pool at his navel like grenadine.

 

He looks impossibly old and frail in that moment. His long silvery hair is undone and spilling in blood-matted snarls over his shoulders. He’s squeezing Jack’s hand in a shaking vice-grip, as though his old college friend- who he  _hates_ -might disappear if he lets go.

 

It’s all  _so wrong._

 

Jazz shuffles ungainly to where her mother is awkwardly fretting over her old friend. She thrusts the washcloth into Maddie’s hands, clutching the remaining towels close against her chest as she backpedals to watch from a safe distance.

Vlad looks deeply grateful as Maddie gently cleans his injuries. Under any other circumstances, that would irk Jazz, but she sees the desperate fear in his wild steel-blue eyes, the way he shakes, nigh-imperceptibly flinches when her mom’s cool gloved hands brush his bare skin.

 

He’s  _terrified_. “Oh, Pariah’s Grave,” he chokes hoarsely, “I was so, so wrong…”

 

“Mister Masters,” slips as a whispered half-question past Jazz’s dry lips. Her tongue feels like clumsy lead in her mouth. She silences herself with a faint clicking of colliding teeth.

 

Maddie pauses her gentle scrubbing at the dried blood on Vlad’s neck to pull out a first-aid kit-- they always have one in the house in case of emergency, which is not all too uncommon given the Fentons’ line of work.

 

Now that they are clean enough to dress, she sees to his wounds. Carefully, she goes about cleaning and bandaging each cut, rubbing cheap OTC pain-relief cream on the worst of the mottled purple bruises that decorate his throat.

 

Jazz stares, eyes narrowed. Vlad will be loving this, she knows, leaning into Maddie’s touches and huffing through half-lidded lustful eyes despite his injuries.

 

Or not: he just stares dazedly at the wall over her shoulder. He starts at every even remotely forceful touch, tears leaking from his red-rimmed eyes as Maddie winds bandages tight over the junction between neck and shoulder.

 

“Do you want to wash your hair?” Maddie asks, eyeing the blood-matted tangles with some mild distaste. Here it comes.

 

“Yes, p-please.”

 

Oh. Did he just  _stutter_? She can’t believe her ears.

 

He leans heavily on Jazz’s mother as she corrals him towards the kitchen sink. It’s evidently not the best way to go about this, but it’s closer and more spacious than the bathroom. Besides, given the amount of rogue ectoplasmic samples that run rampant over the countertops, a little bit of Vlad’s blood in the sink should hardly make much difference.

 

Maddie helps him to lean over the sink and turns on the tap. Vlad doesn’t even seem to care that she is lathering his scalp with the sort of mild dish soap used to clean lost ducklings. He just stands there and takes it as a ratty towel is draped over his shoulders, whimpering piteously as Maddie scrubs his head dry. He limps obediently abreast her and sits immediately when prompted, as if lacking the will to act for himself.

 

Jazz watches in silent bafflement as he leans heavily on her father to step out of his bloodied slacks, allows Jack to guide his trembling arms through the sleeves of an oversized Skunk-Punks tee. It's like a dress on Vlad’s more compact form, and pools loosely in his lap and covers his half-naked thighs almost up to the knee.

 

“Something warm to drink, Vladdie?” Jack’s voice is not quiet, but it holds a tenderness rarely used. Maddie drapes a knitted blanket from the closet over the man’s shoulders. It is garish and complex with needlepoint ghosts and rolling blue waves. Vlad, lord of the genteel and pretentious, doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t look at Maddie even once.

 

Baffled, Jazz can see Vlad squeezing the bigger man’s hand as he nods feverishly. “Please,” he croaks, and his fingers go limp.

 

Her father leans in until his nose is pressed against Masters’ sweaty hairline. He plants the gentlest kiss on Vlad’s forehead, above and between his brows. It is perhaps the single most nuanced thing Jazz has ever seen her father do.

 

“On it, V-man.” The fleeting moment of intimacy passes as Jack pats his friend on the back and retreats into the kitchen. Vlad stares after him with an unreadable expression, eyes misty. The way he looks at Maddie feels somehow plastic in comparison. Jazz would take notes on any other day.

 

“Mister Masters,” Jazz repeats as she lowers herself cautiously onto the sofa, and he turns stiffly to face her. The question must show on her face, because his taut expression softens just a fraction as he sighs.

 

He stares at her for a long moment before nodding slightly, as though confirming something to himself. “A story for another day, Jasmine.” Shakily, he swings his head towards her mother. “May we have a moment alone?” He asks, tone vaguely pleading.

 

Maddie narrows her deep indigo-blue eyes, arms crossed. Jazz doesn't blame her, but nods to let her know it's okay. Her mother nods hesitantly back and turns around.

 

Jazz watches her until she's disappeared into the kitchen, and waits an agonizing moment more until she can hear hushed voices wafting from the room. She opens her mouth with intent to begin a conversation with Vlad anew, but her mother’s head pops out from behind the doorframe.

 

Her copper-colored hair bobs distractingly as she sighs. “Jack and I are going to look for Danny.” Maddie’s voice is hard with unspoken threat as she continues, “Can I trust you to  _get along_ while we’re out?”

 

Vlad nods fervently, and Jazz hears herself say “Yes, of course.” Her stomach is in knots and it must show on her face, because her mother shoots a sympathetic glance as she turns around.

 

“Don’t worry,” Maddie consoles. “Danny will be fine; we’ll find him. I promise.”

 

“Be careful,” Vlad says suddenly, intensely. There is deep fear in his voice, and Jazz can see his strong fingers tighten against the hem of his tee.

 

“What happened to Danny?” She asks abruptly, wringing her hands over the hem of her nightshirt. She  _needs_ to know.

 

For his part, Vlad just pales. His tanned cheeks drain of yet more color as his breath hitches and he seems to simply curl in on himself. “Oh,” he whispers.

 

Jazz can’t circumnavigate the rising lump in her throat. “Please,” she chokes hoarsely. “I need to know. Please tell me what happened-- To him. To  _you_.”

 

“Okay.” The older halfa sighs explosively, dragging his fingers down over his face to wipe away the tear-tracks. Jazz can still barely believe that he of all people has been  _crying._ “I-I’ll try.”

 

“Thank you, Mister Masters.” She can't keep the tremor from her voice even as Vlad lattices his fingers in with her offered hand. His cool grip tightens almost imperceptibly around Jazz’s sweaty palm as she studies him.

 

He just looks so  _old_. Without his straight dark suit and slick silver gel to make him seem powerful and clean and professional, Vlad just looks like a kicked puppy. His grey hair falls in still-damp ringlets that frame his unshaven face and haunted, bloodshot blue eyes. Jazz watches the tendons tighten in his neck as he swallows and shudders against her.

 

“Daniel,” Vlad finally begins, piercing the bubble of anxiety in her stomach with his raspy baritone mumbling. “He- I… I underestimated his… vice, I t-think it would be in English.”

 

“Vice,” Jazz prompts, brows furrowed. Given the need for translation, it's a safe bet to presume that this is an issue specific to ghost culture.  _But he didn't use the word ‘obsession_ ,’ She notes, so it may be something different.

 

“Yes,” the halfa confirms, steadying himself enough to speak evenly. “I imagine you are thinking of the word in the traditional sense.” His stormy blue eyes bore into Jazz with a sudden, desperate intensity. Voice steeped in fresh gravity, he continues. “It's not so easy for ghosts.”

 

Jazz nods and tries her hardest not to squirm under Vlad’s gaze. She can't help but feel pinned, like a specimen under a microscope.

 

“Like an obsession?” She manages.

 

Vlad gives her a thinly veiled look of intrigue, but does not call her out. “It is a similar burden,” he admits. “Ghostly obsessions and vices tend to go hand in hand.”

 

“The difference is, however,” he stops to collect his thoughts, voice taut. “While obsessions are most often relatively benign-- th-that is, something that the ghost will be able to enjoy for the rest of their afterlife-- vices are much less pleasant, at least as far as I have researched.”

 

He clears his throat awkwardly, face flushed with discomfort. “A ghostly vice is…  _punishment,_ for lack of a better word. It doesn't affect other ectoplasmic creatures; only those born of human passing. People like you and I are not meant to exist beyond death, so there must be payment to continue.”

 

“Most can just die quietly, but others have fixations, obsessions, that drive them to remain on earth. It has to mean enough for them to  _pay_. It’s complicated,” he confesses, looking stricken.

 

Jazz nods carefully. “Seems like it,” she agrees, swallowing a cold pill of anxiety. “But what does this have to do with Danny?” She wets her dry lips anxiously, shaking her head. “What’s his… vice?”

 

Vlad narrows his eyes, shoulders hunched defensively. “I ha-have,” he chokes, all semblance of composure rolling off his back like rain on a duck. “An idea.”

 

“Please tell me, Mister Masters.”

 

“He-” the man cuts himself off, shaking hand pressed gingerly against the rapidly-healing wound on his shoulder. Something clicks for Jazz. Oh  _no_.

 

“ _Oh, no_.” The room is spinning. Her chest is too tight and her lungs are slacking off and her heart runs at a hummingbird-beat as her mind struggles to connect this new information with what she already knows. In that moment, Jazz wishes she could just be unextraordinary. Her brilliant mind connects the dots far too well.

 

She caught Danny eating contaminated hot dogs only a few weeks after having discovered his secret. At the time, Jazz had figured that he just needed the ectoplasm and the wieners were technically normal human food  _anyway_ , so she hadn’t thought anything of it.

 

It was laughably easy. She sometimes felt - more so than heard, just the chill in the air as he passed - Danny moving past her room and down the stairs into the kitchen and then down into the lab. He was stealing the ectoplasm from their parents’ experiments, she knew. After the C.A.T. incident, Jazz remembers Danny having told her how terrible the lab-stored ectoplasm tastes, chemical and fake and sour.

 

Jazz hadn’t really considered the idea that he was having any other kind. Where would he get it?

 

All of the data fits. Vice is punishment: Danny’s greatest fear is of rejection, the loss of his humanity, separation from the cushion of civil society. For all the atrocities of murder and theft in the world, the rape and deceit, to devour one’s own is a near-universal taboo. It’s something even most dumb animals skirt with a wide berth, something that takes the perpetrator and makes him something even worse than a simple beast.

 

The ultimate catalyst for rejection, segregation, ostracization. A universal marker for lack of something human and virtuous and good that all good and civil people have; even that all dickish and uncouth types have, at least a little.

 

Evil genius, it is. A physical manifestation of her brother’s deepest psychological flaws, his selfishness, his impulsivity-- all wrapped up in a neat little bundle of horror that exploits his most closely-held and personal fears.

 

It makes Jazz feel sick.

 

“I had not thought,” Vlad mumbles. “I didn’t think Daniel could have something like…  _that_.”

 

She nods numbly. “Yeah,” Jazz croaks, dry throat crackling pathetically. “It’s a cruel payment.”

 

The old man just stares at her incredulously, eyes wide. Jazz shrinks under his stricken gaze: she thought that was the right thing to say, but evidently she’s wrong. “You don’t understand, Jasmine.” He shakes his head, running his long tanned fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to soothe himself. With a sigh, he somewhat collects himself and begins to speak again. “Let me tell you the story of my vice, alright?”

 

Jazz nods placidly. “Sure. Sorry.”

 

“It’s fine,” Vlad dismisses, voice feeble. His dark blue eyes grow misty and distant as he nods to himself. “My portal accident occurred while your parents and I were in college. I’m sure you already know that.” He wrings his hands in his lap, continuing. “I was mad at your father, for one, even before the accident. He spent all his time with your mother, you know.” A fond smile tugs at his thin lips, and he glances almost amusedly down at Jazz. “It was stupid, really. I was a jealous youth. Envious over nothing at all.”

 

“Because you wanted my mom?” Jazz asks, distaste curling in her gut.

 

Vlad actually  _laughs_. “To get away from  _my_ best friend, yes.”

 

She can’t help the small smile that curls the corners of her own mouth at that. The warmth, the sincerity in his voice. Jazz doesn’t think Vlad has  _ever_ talked like this before, let alone in front of someone. It just makes her feel even worse about what happened with her little brother. “You’re hopeless,” she jokes on reflex, and Vlad doesn’t bat an eye.

 

“I’ve figured as much,” he replies without missing a beat, the smile on his face dropping into a concerned frown. “I suppose that’s where the pleasantries end, dear girl. The accident landed me in the hospital-- quarantined. I can’t really blame your mother and father for not visiting, given that, but it still felt… unfair.

 

“That’s where my vice came in. If I couldn’t have my b-best friend, neither could Madeline, you see. My ghost half took that petty jealousy and latched onto it: it became my obsession.”

 

Jazz arches a brow. She doesn’t like the slippery nuance of those statements, quietly shedding the blame for his actions. Vlad may be hurt and weakened, but that doesn’t exempt him from silver-tongued schemes. “I’m not stupid,” she mumbles, halfway under her breath. If he hears it, (which he probably will, given Danny’s uncanny ability to sense her coming from across the house,) she’ll deal with it. If not, good riddance to the effort.

 

“I am not trying to absolve myself of blame, Jasmine.” Vlad’s gaze is cloudy, voice soft. Sad. “I know what I’ve been doing. How unfair it is.” He sighs. “My vice became Plasmius.”

 

“You  _are_ Plasmius,” Jazz points out, distrust burning in her throat. This isn’t right, and it spins in her brain like a hurricane. “It’s like a drug,” she finds herself saying. “You know it’s wrong. You know it’s bad, and it’s hurting the people around you. But you just can’t stop chasing the high… it hurts to stop, doesn’t it?”

 

She watches the old man flinch at her words, but Jazz just can’t bring herself to stop. Something angry and pitying and disgusted is growing in the pit of her belly, and it needs to be let out. “Detoxing is painful and slow. It’s much easier to just up your dosage and get a little more buzz. Plasmius allows an enhanced synergy: a mask to hide behind and the power to do what you want.”

 

Vlad just nods dejectedly. “Seems so.”

 

“Power, though. Power corrupts.” Jazz declares, and Vlad looks so profoundly defeated that she can see tears clinging to his eyelashes, pooling in the crease of his pulled-back lips as they flee his eyes. He makes no sound or breath to otherwise indicate his upset.

 

“Don’t forget your family when you’re off being a brilliant neurologist and an even better psychologist.” The compliment is genuine, but his voice sounds dead and exhausted. She just nods numbly, reaching gently up to lattice their fingers together once more.

 

But that can’t be it. He told her that she doesn’t understand, given her that horrible, terrified look, as though coming to an epiphany himself. “But what don’t I understand?” Jazz isn’t quite sure she really wants to know.

 

Vlad closes his eyes, tipping his head back against the sofa. “Stupid brilliant girl,” he mumbles. “Vices are punishments because they are the things we don’t want to  _want._ ”

 

“So… you’re saying that on some level, Danny  _wants_ to pull a Swift Runner? A Donner pass? To kill people?” Unspoken:  _eat people_?

 

He shrugs. “I doubt literally. But think about it. With all he does, he’s still tormented at school. His parents love him but they still neglect him. Daniel is a good young man, but I don’t think he would be  _completely_ devoid of bitterness after that.” Vlad sighs, looking away to trace the patterns of the carpet with his eyes.

 

“You’re saying he wants revenge.”

 

“Who doesn’t?”

 

The ringing of the landline breaks the spell, and Jazz hops up from the sofa. Vlad’s cool fingers linger for a moment in the empty air, curled slightly as though still wrapped around her hand. “I got it,” Jazz says, a little evasively.” She moves over to the phone on the side table with long strides, leaning against the wall as she picks it up and tucks it against her ear.

 

“Tucker?” She asks. Her gut is filled with leaden dry ice as she hears the boy’s frantic low voice on the other end of the line, filtering tinnily through the receiver. The world is lurching beneath Jazz, and she sways against the wall.

 

“Danny is at my place,” the boy explains. “But he isn’t doing too good.” The words are like water in her ears, unfocused and muffled.

 

“I’m… god. I’m really sorry,” Tuck chokes over the phone. “He tried to off himself in my bathroom.” Jazz can hear him faintly crying, and feels her breath hitch.

 

She can’t keep the tremor from her voice when asking, “Is he-”

 

“Fine,” Tucker interrupts. “He’s okay. I c-caught him before he could do anything… permanent, I guess. Cried himself to sleep. He’s here, in my bed. Okay. For now.”

 

Her brain is processing the information, but she isn’t hearing what’s being said beyond that. Thank goodness Danny is okay-- oh, but not. He’s not ready to come home, especially not with Vlad still here, still wounded. He’s too mentally and emotionally fragile for that. Oh  _God_. Jazz doesn’t pray often, but she can’t help but beg to the sky that everything will be okay. “Okay,” she croaks, blinking away tears that roll down her cheeks anyway. “Thank you for calling. Keep him there. I’ll try and get things sorted out over here. Thank you. Tell him I love him.”

 

Tucker is halfway through his faintly staticky affirmative when Jazz hangs up, hands shaking.

 

“Is everything alright?” Vlad probes, leaning towards her with brows furrowed and mouth slightly parted, voice thick with concern. “Jasmine?”

 

Jazz almost can’t bring herself to speak. Almost. She blinks away the tears still clinging to her eyelashes, hands let limp at her sides.

 

“Danny tried to kill himself tonight.”


	5. V

Part V

 

Jack watches the tea steep with unfocused eyes. He knows his huge hands are shaking beyond his control as he grips the countertop. Oh, god. He’s totally screwed up. Again. Vlad is hurt, Danny’s missing: would this have happened if he had just confronted his son when he first thought he knew?

 

Maddie comes resignedly into the kitchen just behind him, taking long, slow strides. “Don’t go back out there,” she commands meekly. “They need to talk and I think Jazz is getting him calm better than we could.” Her voice is low and weary, and Jack can see the faint sheen of sweat and tears that glistens greasily on her reddened cheeks. She is flushed from emotion and exertion over the bridge of her nose, but the rest of her face seems sickly pale.

 

“You okay, Mads?” Jack asks. He presses one hand firmly on the small of her back, rubbing soothingly as she leans against the cold kitchen counter. It’s a stupid question to ask, he knows, but it makes a selfish little part of him feel better, and listening for her answer serves well enough to distract him from his own treacherous thoughts.

 

She nods hesitantly, stiffly. Even Jack can tell that she doesn’t really mean it, but he nods along anyway. “I’ll live,” she says hoarsely. “But not if we just stay here and do nothing.”

 

Oh. “What will we do?” He raises, knowing the answer in the back of his mind. Jack swallows thickly past the lump in his throat, a cold pill of guilt catching hard on its way down. This is bad. So bad. What can he possibly do to make things better? Nothing, probably. The worried culpability runs circles in his head.

 

“We’re going to find Danny,” Maddie declares, steel in her voice even as it wavers. Her hands shake with rage, anger he can see flickering in her deep blue eyes and spoken of in her hard-set jaw. “And we’re going to destroy the monster ghost that did this to him and Vlad and me.”

 

A protest dies in his throat as fresh hot tears spill from Maddie’s wide, red-rimmed eyes. They crawl along the curve of her cheek and drip down to roll off her newly donned jumpsuit. “Are you sure that’s what we need?” Jack asks meekly. “We probably shouldn’t leave Jazz and Vladdie alone…” He allows himself to trail off, quailing under his wife’s searching gaze.

 

Her expression softens a fraction, and she wipes her eyes on her clean blue sleeve. “Are you okay, Jack? You’d usually be all over this.”

 

Part of him is a little offended that she is approaching him as though he is so impregnably single-minded, but then again he probably overdid it a little on the acting before. It’s easy to get into it and work with it as a force of habit: he’s a ghost hunter, and heck if he isn’t  _actually_ excited about finding and studying ghosts. What about their language? Their social order? Is there a culture? What is it like?

 

That innocent wondering feels like ash in his mouth, as it were. Jack’s own son is missing and his best friend since college is barely alive on the living room sofa right now. His daughter is probably traumatized from seeing all the blood and goodness knows what might have happened to Danny if Vlad is so torn up. He knows that Danny is strong, maybe inhumanly so if his current hunch has anything to say about it, so what possibly could have happened? Phantom rarely ever let humans in the vicinity of a battle get hurt, so if whatever he had fought could get so badly at Vladdie… what had happened to the infamous Danny Phantom?

 

Maddie's heavy sigh shakes him from his thoughts. “Jack? Are you okay?” She asks again, this time more concerned. One hand is hovering over his arm, delicate fingers ghosting over his clothes in a vaguely soothing gesture.

 

“Fine, sorry.” He drags his fingers down over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose with a huff. “I’m just worried. This isn’t exactly a routine occurrence.”

 

“I’m worried too. Danny will be okay,” Maddie assures lowly. She treads lightly, seeming to notice the bitterness in his explanation, but the deliberate way in which she speaks just makes Jack feel sicker. “But we need to find him before we can help him.”

 

Nodding, Jack acquiesces. “Yeah, maybe. I just think it might be better to look after Jazz and Vladdie right now.”

 

Maddie doesn’t listen, and bulldozes right over his meek protest. He follows her out to the GAV, a stun-blaster clutched low against his belly. She has an electrified net launcher and a bazooka and a burn laser. Briefly, Jack wonders if it might be better to confess his theory  _before_ they go out and potentially hunt down their own son, but the fear crawling in his gut stops him. What if he’s wrong? What if it’s a trick?

 

There are too many unreliable variables, he decides, clinging to his inner scientist in a vain attempt to rationalize. He has no real way of knowing if Danny is actually the enigmatic Phantom, and honestly the more he turns it over in his head the more ridiculous it sounds. Nevermind the Phantom’s inexplicable possession and knowledge of Fenton devices- they give precautionary anti-ghost things out to plenty of Amity Park’s citizens, don’t they? -A ghost  _and_ a human? That’s impossible, even laughable. Right?

 

Something dark plays hopscotch down his spine, and he shivers as he steps into the RV passenger side. Maddie vaults up into the driver’s seat, slamming the door hard and starting the vehicle. He stares blankly off onto the road, tracing the thin yellow lines with his eyes as they flash in the hot beam of the headlights. What if he’s  _not_ a human and a ghost? Danny has always been terrified of ghosts. If something had happened to get him involved, he would surely tell his parents, right? What if he’s  _just_ a ghost now?

 

It’s definitely possible, Jack realizes with horror. There was supposedly a woman-ghost posing as a high school psychiatrist, ‘counseling the kids and feeding on their abject teen misery, siphoning their life force bit by bit. No one had even known the difference until she tried to off one of the students. Jack has never actually found out who the woman-ghost had targeted, but the knowledge that this ghost  _can_ pretend sets his breath hitching, blood boiling.

 

Danny has acted strange ever since he allegedly got shocked by the portal in September of last year. It was a bad electrocution that scarred him and scrambled parts of his brain, but he was  _okay_ , or so the doctors said. But if it was something a normal doctor can’t see…

 

Sudden secretive behavior? Check. He slinks evasively around questions with expert finesse, and cuts school almost daily now, as though he had suddenly just stopped caring. Jack knows he lies. He does it all the time, even about seemingly little things. He looks on with visible distaste as his parents talk about their research. Some of their more destructive ghost hunting equipment was mysteriously disabled or outright destroyed overnight-- has that been Danny? Or, Jack supposes,  _not_?

 

So has it not been Danny at all since the accident? Has it been only a changeling in disguise, playing masquerade games with them, posing as their son? Maybe... but what about all the little things that are  _so_ Danny? How he wrinkles his nose at the smell of Jack’s toast in the morning, and guzzles coffee like water. The way his lips push up on his cheeks and crinkle under his eyes when he laughs at stupidly obscure jokes made by his friends, or the pure wonder in his gaze as he stares up at the constellations from the OPs Center?

 

Jack refuses to believe that this past year and a half has been nothing but a lie. A ghost would have had to sit in on Danny’s life for several years, or more, to have mastered those kinds of personal nuances. It had to have sat in on Danny’s  _entire_ life. Maybe he’s being hopelessly optimistic, but it just doesn’t feel right to simply give up on his son. Since when does a Fenton ever?

 

They drive in aimless, careless circles, haphazardly swerving around corners and ducking into back alleys so narrow that the plated sides of the GAV sand a fine layer of concrete and brick-dust from the buildings they pass. As the night wears on, Maddie grows increasingly desperate and erratic in her driving until Jack, of all people, finally takes it upon himself to stop her and escort them both out of the vehicle.

 

“Maddie, sweetie.” He can feel the tremble in his own voice; it vibrates and crackles piteously in his throat, but he goes on despite it. “I don’t think we’ll be able to find him tonight.”

 

His wife looks crushed. Sweat has twisted her hair into stiff, salty curls, her eyes are pink and puffy from crying, and a thin grey trail of washed-out mascara paints wavering lines down her cheeks. She holds her hands close to her body, as though protecting herself, and despite her best attempts to hide it Jack can see the stiffness in her wrists: she has gripped the steering wheel so tight for so long her hands are starting to cramp up.

 

“Why would you say that?” She asks, and it is a demand. Her voice is low and shaking but it is woven with steel and fire. “We’re  _going_ to find Danny! We can’t just  _give up_!”

 

Jack feels the corner of his mouth twitch at the small irony. “No,” he soothes. “But you won’t do our boy any good if you’re exhausted and confused. We should go home and get some sleep, and then we can start searching again first thing in the morning, when we’re fresh and we have a plan.” Maddie opens her mouth as though to protest, but Jack cuts her off before she can start again. “Besides,” he reasons. “I’m sure Jazz needs us now, too, and we need to take care of Vladdie. He was there before you were, so maybe he can tell us about what happened on his end.”

 

Maddie visibly wilts at the mention of their daughter, the fervor in her eyes smothered beneath lids hooded with exhaustion. She lets her shoulders slump, leaning heavily against Jack’s chest. He sighs and leans into the hug, wrapping his big meaty arms around his wife’s tiny frame as her narrow shoulders shake with sobs.

 

She whimpers and gasps beneath his grip. He can feel the staccato huffs of her weeping breaths against his chest, the tension in his clothes where her delicate fingers curl like claws against him. He swallows his own quiet sob, blinking back a rush of vision-clouding tears.

 

“Let’s go, hon,” he all but whispers, gently nudging his wife aside and herding her back into the GAV. This time she slides into the passenger seat, slowly closing the door as though it might shatter beneath her touch. She tucks her long legs against herself, feet up on the seat and shins pressed awkwardly against the dashboard as she tries her hardest to curl into herself.

 

Jack sighs deeply, easing into the driver’s side and shutting the door. He starts the van with a half-hearted wrench of the key. The engine turns over with a despondent sort of grumble, as though it shares their grief. It hums quietly as they drive home. Jack doesn’t think he has ever driven so slowly and so carefully, rounding each turn with utmost care. He shoots little furtive glances at his wife every so often, listening to the bass of the engine and the soft rhythm of Maddie’s sniffles. He adds his own quiet sighs to the beat, tapping his gloved fingers against the steering wheel as they drive in halfway-soothing circles.

 

He really wants to tell her. What if his theory is correct? She really deserves to know, anyway. “I think…” Jack breathes, sighing hard through his nose. “I just wonder if Danny told us everything about the accident in the basement.”

 

Maddie looks up, peering over her knees with wide teary eyes. “What do you mean, Jackie?” Her voice is low and hoarse, but hopeful.

 

“Well… remember how after his accident in college, Vladdie… well, I guess he just  _changed_? Got angrier. Pushed everyone away, all that.” She nods, and Jack continues hesitantly. “I just wonder if that had anything to do with the accident itself as opposed to the hospital time in isolation.”

 

He turns to see his wife’s indigo-blue eyes narrow just a fraction. “Yes… Do I want- do I want to know why you’re asking?”

 

Jack nods, still unsure. “The same thing happened to Danny, sort of. He’s gotten… more rebellious, I suppose. Maybe it’s not just a teenage phase…” He takes a breath, feeling it hitch harshly in his chest. “Maybe Danny got changed in the same… way-”

 

And it all comes crashing down on him. It takes every ounce of self-control not to floor it right back to Fentonworks that very moment, and Jack can feel the sweat beading on his brow. Instead, he spins the steering wheel, urging the GAV into a steep, sweeping turn back onto the main road. “Nevermind that now, Maddie. Didn’t you say you saw the Wisconsin Ghost up at Vladdie’s place?” His voice comes out quiet and warbling and foreign, even to his own ears. He presses down just a little harder on the gas, clinging to the epiphany that’s still rattling in his brain like an alarm bell.

 

“Yes,” Maddie ventures, brows pinched into a thin frown above her nose. “Why?”

 

“I wanted to be sure,” he replies shakily, easing up as they approach an empty intersection. He runs a red light, but there is no one else there, so it doesn’t really matter. Jack just doesn’t want to spook his wife any further. “You think Wisconsin,” he manages, then stops to swallow past the lump in his throat. “You think it overshadowed Danny or-”

 

She shakes her head, sweat-stiff curls bouncing with her movements. “No,” Maddie replies, voice wavering. “It was the Phantom, I th- no, no, that’s not right- I’m sure of it.” She pauses to take a deep breath, and Jack can see her grip tighten around her knees. “It tried to convince me that it was Danny,” she explains, voice breaking on the second syllable of their son’s name. Jack blinks wetness away from his eyes, watching as his wife scrubs at her own in the seat next to him. “But I saw; his eyes were glowing green.” She chokes on that last phrase, sobs shooting up from her throat. “It used Danny to- oh, Jack- it was  _awful_.”

 

Horror just pools in Jack’s gut as he takes it all in. Phantom went after Wisconsin-- Vladdie is in tatters and Danny is missing… as much as he tries to rationalize a way out of it, the evidence is overwhelming. A lump of ice settles in his throat, making it hurt to speak.

 

“Don’t describe it,” he says, as soothingly as he possibly can- which is likely not very. “Don’t think about it. Don’t worry. We’ll get this all taken care of.”

 

“I couldn’t even if I tried,” Maddie all but whispers, and then goes silent.

 

Jack sighs heavily as they come to a stop in front of Fentonworks. “Maybe,” he concedes, a little dejectedly, “but I understand. It’s hard. I haven’t seen what you’ve seen.” He lets the engine fall silent and pulls the keys from the GAV. “Now I want you to go upstairs, get changed, and go to bed.” He raises one meaty finger to her lips when she opens her mouth to protest. “No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You need to rest. I’ll look after Vladdie and Jazz until the morning- it’s only a few hours anyway.”

 

Maddie stares up at him with those glistening blue eyes, and Jack feels himself melt, just a little. “Are you sure?” She asks, and it comes out soft and warbling and deeply vulnerable. He almost caves right then and there. Almost.

 

“Yes,” he insists, dropping one hand to gently squeeze her shoulder as he ushers his wife across the sidewalk. Ever so gently, he corrals her over the front stoop and into the house, shutting the door as quietly as he can behind them. “Now please, go to sleep.”

 

In the sagging of her shoulders and lowering of her gaze, Jack can tell that he has won, at least for now. He casts only a cursory glance to Vlad and Jazz, who are sitting in silent company. It would be a comforting sight were it not for the stricken pallid tone of Vlad’s face, and the still-wet tear tracks that shine on Jazz’s ruddy cheeks.

 

Despite the urge to go and see what’s wrong, Jack knows that Maddie wouldn’t be ready for his hypothesis: she’s fragile enough as is. So he helps her up the stairs and all but tucks her into bed, closing the door quietly behind him as he leaves. He can hear her moving in the room as soon as the door is shut, and the distinct creaky sound of the old rubber lining as she opens the window, the muted grunts as she lowers herself outside. She’s more than likely heading out to look some more, but in his heart Jack knows better than to try to stop her. He lets loose a resigned sigh and turns away from the closed bedroom door.

 

On the way downstairs he notices that Vlad’s spindly fingers are entangled in Jazz’s mess of frizzy orange hair. He strokes her head as she cries, never once foregoing that awful agonized look on his face. His brows are pulled into a tight frown above his nose, lips pressed in a thin line, stormy grey eyes glittering with unshed moisture.

 

They know something.

 

“What happened?” Jack asks, looking Vlad right in the eye. He knows that they’ve been on less than stellar terms as of late, and Vlad especially has let his isolation fester, but the silent pleading in the other man’s eyes is almost enough to make Jack simply turn around and leave. He doesn’t.

 

“I- we don’t- we know no more than you do, Jack.” Vlad’s voice is hoarse and afraid, dripping with a helpless sort of disquiet that sets Jack on edge. There is none of the usual unveiled disdain, only desperation, and fear.

 

He sighs and lowers himself into the armchair across from the sofa. Jazz follows his movement from behind a curtain of sweaty hair, tucking her legs defensively closer to her on the couch beside Vlad. She knows something, he can tell. So does he.

 

They know something. Is it the same thing Jack thinks he knows?

 

Only one way to find out. “Danny is the Phantom,” he says dully. Jack feels very, very stupid saying this, and very, very tired, but his audience rewards his exhaustion. Jazz’s flushed, slack-jawed reaction would be more than enough confirmation, but the look of utterly defeated resignation melting onto Vlad’s face is the last nail in the coffin.

 

Huh. “Danny is the Phantom,” he repeats numbly, and the words just sound so ludicrous to his own ears. He almost wants to smile about how insane it all is, but Jack finds he hasn’t the energy to even start. Fresh tears spill from Jazz’s wide green eyes. “Am I right?”

 

Silence reigns, oppressive and pregnant as Jack waits for a response-- ideally from both, but honestly a response at all would be cause for celebration in his book.

 

“How long have you known?” Jazz finally croaks.

 

Jack just shrugs. “Since- well, I’d had a hunch for a little while. Didn’t  _know_ till just now.” He bends over in his chair, pressing at his temples in a vain attempt to ease the throbbing headache that’s growing there. A humorless laugh escapes him, and such a sound feels alien and cold even to his own ears. “Sure explains a lot.”

 

Vlad leans over, swaying unsteadily, to put one hand on Jack’s shoulder, shaky but firm and cool.  _Cool._ Insufficient warmth and discoloration in the extremities can be attributed to blood loss in large quantities, but not real  _cold_. As far as ghosts went Vlad would be far beyond hyperthermia, but a human would be comatose on ice at least to be at a temperature like that.

 

But what about something that was  _both_?

 

“I should have known,” Jack finally chokes. It’s not until he tries to look up at his daughter that he realizes his vision is a tearful blur of watercolor shapes. He blinks and they roll down his cheeks, and he is not ashamed to cry. “Two portal accidents,” he says. “Two weird ghosts.”

 

Vlad stiffens at that, eyes wide. His expression is one of almost comical horror, face twisted into a terrified mask of guilt and regret.

 

It’s just like him to act so dramatic, Jack thinks. “I don’t hate you,” he says. “I don’t blame you.” His legs feel weak and his brain is about as useful as cold oatmeal sloshing around in his skull at this point. He doesn’t really feel  _sad_ , per se, but the tears won’t stop coming and his body won’t stop shaking long enough for him to stand. Each breath comes in a wet gasp between the sobs so he can’t even collect himself, just cry helplessly into his hands while his daughter and his oldest friend look on.

 

“What,” Vlad says flatly; it isn’t a question, rather an expression of dumbfounded disbelief.

 

Jazz cuts in from there. “What about mom?” She asks, wringing her hands. There is intensity in her sea-green eyes that belies her bedraggled appearance.

 

“Outside,” Jack replies. “I tried to get her to sleep, but I heard her going out the window once I closed the door. She doesn’t know.”

 

“Oh,” says Vlad, brow furrowed. “Huh.” He turns to Jazz without missing a beat, mouth pulled into a pinched little frown. “Daniel was at the Foleys’ last we heard, correct?” She nods at him, shooting a nervous glance towards Jack and blinking away fresh moisture from her eyes. “It’s good that we know that…”

 

Hope plucks at Jack’s chest, hitching his breath as he asks, “So we could go save him? Bring him back safe?”

 

Jazz and Vlad exchange looks, and Vlad puts one hand across his chest against his wounded shoulder. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, dad. He tried-” She cuts herself off, shrinking a little in her seat. “He almost died. Danny’s not in a good way right now, and uh-”

 

Oh. Realization swells painfully in his chest until Jack can barely breathe. “Oh, no,” he huffs. “Poor Danny must be so scared of us- his  _parents_!” Panic constricts his throat so the words come out small and choked. “He has to- he must hate us.”

 

“No,” Vlad says forcefully, squeezing hard on Jack’s hand. “Absolutely not.” His expression softens a little as he continues. “Daniel loves both you and Madeline very, very deeply. All he wants is to protect you.” He scoffs a little at that. “Quite frankly it’s a little obnoxious.”

 

Jack says nothing in response, wiping listlessly at his eyes. He knows that Danny loves him, more than anything else. It’s really the only thing he’s sure of at this point- perhaps except the burning hurt in his chest.

 

“What about the mayor?” He finally asks.

 

“Framed,” says Jazz.

 

He nods,”And the banks?”

 

“Hypnotised. He couldn’t help it, and his friends couldn’t stop him on their own. I thought about getting you and mom involved, but…” She trails off, wringing her hands.

Neither of his children felt safe enough in their own home to trust him or Maddie with this overwhelming secret, and the part that hurts the most is that they were right in doing so. They’re  _right_. Jack wouldn’t trust himself either, and he especially wouldn’t trust Maddie to reign in her first impulse of shooting at the ‘ghost.’ What kind of parent  _is_ he to inspire such terror in his own children? Jack feels sick.

 

It’s not like the kids have never given any indication. Jazz is perpetually advocating for the Phantom, to give him the benefit of the doubt, and while Danny has always been less vocal, he too insists that not all ghosts are bad. What did Jack and Maddie do? They just brushed off their own children’s increasingly fervent claims that they were wrong, that things were different.

 

And they were right about that, too, Jack thinks miserably. He and Maddie are supposed to be scientists, yet they utterly abandoned the method when results didn't align with their preconceptions and expectations. Unintentionally or not, they destroyed their son's life over a stupid theory in a stupid goddamned notebook from their college days

 

“I can’t believe this,” he whispers, and doesn’t believe his own words. What a fool he’s been, an idiot. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, it seems, because everything is so clear in retrospect. He can see it all laid out, all the times he's turned the other cheek with denial roaring in his ears, all the times he's turned a blind eye and ignored things when he knows they're wrong because he was too much of a damn coward to face the truth. “God, what have we done?”

 

He feels sick. Jack can see the lines of puckered scar tissue where the neckline of Vlad’s oversized tee slips down, the fresh bruises in ugly shades of yellow and blue, the deep furrows drawn clearly by desperate fingers-- and all he can think of is that he is the reason for it. He drove his son to this, his own child. Jack’s inaction is chronicled in the half-moon canyon of missing flesh and hindbrain scarring on his old friend- now a stranger’s skin.

 

_He did this._

 

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you,” Jazz finally murmurs, brushing wavy strands of fire-orange hair from her eyes, which are red and puffy from crying. “We were afraid.”

 

Jack nods, wiping his own eyes. The tears blur his vision even as he blinks them away, and they roll hot down his cheeks, burning with shame as Jazz leans forward, arms outstretched. “I know. I know.” He chokes on that, swallowing a fresh sob. “I know, baby.”

 

He takes his daughter into his arms, kissing her frazzled orange bedhead and stroking her back in soothing circles. Jack slips off one of his gloves, brushing warm tears from her cheeks with the bare pad of his thumb. He holds her close and tight, irrationally fearing that if he lets go she might just float away, like a ghost.

 

Jazz is his world in that moment. His stomach flips as she draws away, but she only swipes his tears away with her delicate fingers, so much like Maddie’s, and gives him a sad, sad smile. She looks just like her mother, with a smattering of freckles blotted out by flush, striking green eyes full of grief and compassion. “It’s okay, dad.”

 

The similarities end there. Even through her tears, Jazz’s voice is level. There is hope flickering in her expression, in the twitch of her mouth and the glint in her eyes. Maddie is wild and desperate, impossible to control. With great regret Jack realizes that she is the greatest danger to her own son rather than any wayward ghost.

 

“I love you, Jazzy-pants,” Jack mumbles.

 

“Love you too,” Jazz replies, wiping at her own eyes.

 

Jack is almost ready to drop the conversation and rest in silent company, but something bothers him, and he voices as much. “What I still don’t understand,” he cautions between sniffles, “is what exactly happened between Danny and you, Vlad.” He meets the halfa’s wavering gaze, brows furrowed. “You went through the same thing, so I imagine you’d be close- why did he…” Jack gestures vaguely before deciding hesitantly on a phrasing, “go after you?”

 

Vlad and Jazz exchange nervous glances; Jazz nods curtly, sighing almost inaudibly through her teeth.

 

“That’s true,” Vlad concedes awkwardly, “but I’m afraid most of my interactions with Daniel were rather antagonistic on my part.” He must notice the undisguised horror dawning on Jack’s face, because he quickly adds, “This-” and gestures to his injury, “is by no means the norm. It’s usually just pranks, like turning shower walls invisible, or running for mayor- Something… something went very, very wrong this time. He'd mentioned being hungry- but I just made fun of him. I didn't think it would turn out like this...”

 

Jazz nods. “I’ll say,” she agrees, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Danny’s been... taking care of... himself…” She stops to nervously wet her lips, throwing an anxious look Jack’s way. “He’s been managing it pretty much since this whole thing started with minimal help. After what happened the last time he slipped up, it isn’t like him at all to neglect his needs like this.” There is blatant accusation in her voice as she turns her glare onto Vlad, who swallows hard and sinks against the couch.

 

“I used a device,” he admits hoarsely. “To sap his power.”

 

It looks like they’re going to continue their discussion, but Jack cuts them off. “What are you talking about?” He sniffs a little, crossing his arms. “I know I haven’t been in on this as long as you two, but I still deserve to know what’s going on.”

 

Vlad averts his gaze, and Jazz’s expression goes grim. “I’m just afraid it might be… too much at once, dad.”

 

Jack shakes his head. “It is already.” He sighs, blinking to clear his damp eyes. “I need to know this. I need to be able to understand.”

 

“Okay,” Jazz concedes, albeit reluctantly. Her shoulders slump and her gaze wanders everywhere but her father as she explains, “Danny has a problem. A ghostly problem. He needs to eat… uh… ectoplasm.”

 

“Sure,” Jack says. That doesn’t sound so bad to him. “Is that why he started to actually change the ecto-filtrator?”

 

Jazz shrugs. “Anyway, it’s something specific to Danny, and it’s a big no-no, even among ghosts… for obvious reasons.”

 

Oh. Jack can feel bile burn his throat as he nods mutely, distantly disturbed by the implication. “So it’s like… cannibalism… for ghosts?”

 

Vlad nods at him. “More or less.” He rubs at his wounded shoulder, wincing.

 

“So that was-”

 

“Not really his fault,” Jazz cuts in. “Like Vlad said, he used a device to drain Danny’s power. At his usual activity level he can go a few months without eating at all.” She gestures vaguely to the kitchen. “Especially when he eats contaminated food that gets in with the experiments. It’s like the best of both worlds for him.

 

“But,” she continues, “ It’s hard to tell when he starts to starve. He gets dumber, and meaner, and that’s easy to attribute to lack of sleep.” Jazz shakes her head, almost chastising. “By the time it gets to the point where something’s really wrong he’s lost his head and is in too much pain to feed himself like a reasonable person.”

 

She sighs, rubbing at her eyes. “I wasn’t there, so I can’t know, but I imagine Danny was at the tail end of his ‘dumb-and-mean’ phase. When Vlad tried to weaken him, he inadvertently finished off his reserves. Vlad, a ghost, was the nearest source of ectoplasm, Danny flipped out, and here we are.”

 

Jack nods, covering his mouth with his hands. He sighs into his latticed fingers, rolling his shoulders and letting them slump pitifully. “What will he do now? He’s pretty much on the run: I doubt he’ll be coming back here to swipe the ecto-filtrator any time soon.”

 

Jazz shakes her head, humming weary agreement. “You’re right, but I wouldn’t worry about keeping him fed, if that’s what you’re talking about. He has reserve at Tucker’s, and maybe Sam’s, I think.”

 

“What will  _we_ do now?” He asks.

 

This time, Vlad speaks, pressing his thin fingers over his wrapped wounds. “After this nightmare I suppose he’ll avoid us as much as possible. He may very well have fled to the Ghost Zone.”

 

Jack arches a brow. “The Ghost Zone?” He echoes. “But Danny fights with all the ghosts.” He swallows a chilling rush of fear at the thought. “Wouldn’t they tear him to pieces if he’s so upset- or he’ll tear  _them_ to pieces… I’m not sure which is worse.”

 

Jazz shrugs helplessly, but Vlad seems to consider the question at greater length. “No,” he finally says. “I think not. Daniel is close with a tribe of cryptid-based manifestations, a tribe of no than thirty entities ranging from level five to seven on the GIW-sanctioned scale of ghostly power.”

 

Both Fentons stare, and Vlad clears his throat sheepishly. “Or so the grapevine says,” he adds awkwardly, and Jazz rolls her eyes.

 

“Yeah, sure. I’ve seen Pandora, and he’s mentioned some others in passing. I doubt he has a shortage of places to go. Even some of the ones he fights with on and off might shelter him if they see how bad things are.”

 

Vlad sighs. “Which means we have no shortage of places to look.” He turns to Jack, gaze calculating. “However I’m not sure if going out and tracking him down is the best idea given the current circumstances.”

 

“You’re right there,” Jack concedes. “So what  _do_ we do?”

 

“I think the best course of action would be to keep in touch with Sam and Tucker,” Jazz declares. “He’s trusted them with his secret from the very beginning, and he was- uh, he was with Tuck last- last night.” Her voice shakes at the mention of the night, and Jack feels his chest tighten at his daughter’s distress.

 

“And,” he  says, remembering the greatest complication at hand, “we need to keep Maddie from getting her hands on him. She’s too upset to think clearly, and I know for a fact she won’t listen if she finds Danny. We need to distract her as much as possible while he recovers with his friends.”

 

Vlad nods, cracking a flimsy grin. “I’ve got just the thing,” he says devilishly, eyes flashing with the glow of carmine ectoplasm.


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: lots of language, dissociation, toxic friendship, suicide mention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I comment on anything else, please allow me to thank all of the wonderful people who volunteered to beta read and proof this chapter! It would be a mess without their help! Please send some love to:  
> xKittyKylo on deviantART  
> KingdomWielders on dA (who has been having a rough time lately, so please give a little extra support!)  
> Nexelus on dA  
> TheGeekyNobody on dA / G+  
> A-wolf-called-Smokey on dA  
> Patchykins here on the Archive and on dA (who is the reason this story exists in the first place!)  
> A-Failed-Experiment on dA  
> GhostlyGlamini / IcedShards on dA / FF  
> Beanmug on dA  
> Not everyone has had time to contribute their best, I know, but I feel that this chapter is as complete as it will get, and am eager to share it here.  
> Again, I apologize for the long wait; this chapter was a bugger to write. I hope that you all like reading it, and I would love to see your feedback down in the comments! If you would ever like to beta read for future chapters or fics of mine, please contact me via PM here on Ao3 or on my deviantART, which is also dweeblet. : )

They arrive at school early, but maybe they’ve just gotten lucky; Sam doesn’t care to count it. No strikes here. 

 

She likes to think of Danny’s typical dress as ‘conspiracy-chic,’ (a great deal for her own comfort,) being defined in large part by tees with space and ghost-themed prints, kitschy inside jokes, and the occasional video game character atop baggy jeans and worn high-top sneakers. As irked as he may sometimes become regarding the matter, he’s not too keen on variety, and wears more or less the same thing each day, so the first thing Sam notices is that he’s not wearing his own clothes.

 

That’s strike one.

 

A loud orange Crash Bandicoot shirt of Tucker’s is too small and clings to his cadaverous chest; Sam wonders idly if his ribs have always been so prominent. His borrowed pair of military green cargo pants is at once too short and too wide at the hips. Seeing Danny’s pants fall down would be comical in any other circumstances, but today it just makes him look smaller and frailer than he already does.

 

And boy, does he. His face, usually a creamy tan, is chalky and grey. Dark crescents are hung beneath his eyes in blistered shades of purple and red, bruised like he’s been crying. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, posture hunched and defensive as he shuffles to his locker. Sam can squint and see the way his movements jerk and shake, like a puppet on unsteady strings, as though he isn’t in complete control of his own body.

 

Strike two.

 

Tucker is close behind him, frantically fretting and helping Danny to gather up his school supplies. “You don’t have to do this,” he says in a hoarse half-whisper, desperate. “I can cover for you. You miss school all the time anyway! You need to go get help for whatever this is! Frostbite, Clockwork—  even your parents!”

 

Danny whips his head at the mention of his parents, dull blue eyes flickering with harrowing red, just for a moment.

 

Strike three, and out.

 

Sam can count all the times she’s seen Danny’s eyes go red on one hand and still have fingers left over, even including her hazy recollection of the timeline-hopping disaster that was the C.A.T. incident. As a general rule that’s a bad thing, and something is immeasurably screwed up.

 

For his part, Tuck looks careworn and flushed, rumpled curls sticking in frizzy spirals out from beneath his beanie. He’s not in nearly as bad shape as Danny is, but Sam can see that his eyes are pink and slightly puffy from crying, and she suspects that he is not binding today beneath his oversized grey sweatshirt. For him to neglect such an integral element to his daily routine, to his deeply valued self-image, Sam is certain that something is wrong. 

 

She frowns as the two edge up on her left, crossing her arms. Tucker’s strong hands tremble uncharacteristically as he aims feebly to steer Danny away from her, only managing a meek attempt to herd the taller boy back to the door. The halfa, for his part, does not speak, instead opting to emit a distressed sort of creaking sound from high in the back of his throat.

 

“Are— ” Sam stumbles over her tongue, “what happened to you two?”

 

Danny still refuses to talk, but the strange sound drops to his chest, deepening into a hoarse groan before crackling pitifully away. Tucker puts a shaking hand on his forearm, squeezing gently.

 

“Easy,” he soothes, shushing the taller boy like he’s coaxing a wounded animal. “It's okay,” Then he turns to Sam, hurt blazing in his liquid brown eyes, “I don’t know,” Tuck confesses. “He won’t- he hasn't spoken since last night—  I can't make him. He— ” Tucker chokes on his words, a fresh barrage of tears welling in his exhausted eyes, spilling down his cheeks. “He tried to— ”

 

Sam wilts as her friend cuts himself off, unable to continue. She turns to Danny again, watching his muddy eyes filled with something like boredom, a deeply defensive apathy that leaves him little more than a vacuous shell. As she takes his haggardness in, a lump swells in Sam’s throat. He just stares ahead, blank face twitching every so often as though he’s in pain, but does not move or speak or even react. She thinks, through the haze of oppressive horror, that she has read enough to know what Tucker was going to say now.

 

“You don't mean— ” Even Sam cannot bring herself to say it, and instead makes a slicing motion over her throat with one finger.

 

When Tucker nods and Danny still does not react, indignation bubbles up in her gut. How  _ dare  _ he? “God dammit,” Sam snaps, fists clenched so tight at her sides that she can feel her lacquered nails digging into her palms. Hot tears prick at the corners of her eyes as she chokes,“Seriously, Danny?” 

 

He still doesn't speak, but lowers his head almost inconsequentially, silently quailing and doing his best to shut out the world around him. In that moment the poor boy just looks so tiny and fragile, so timorous and pathetic that Sam almost finds it in herself to comfort him. Almost.

 

But then she thinks of what he almost did to them, to Tucker, to  _ her _ , and her anger rises anew with a fresh torrent of tears.

 

“You tried to fucking kill yourself,” she hisses, barely above a whisper and voice trembling with barely-restrained ire, “and now you won't even speak to us?”

 

“Sam!” Tucker cries, eyes wide with disbelieving horror, “This is not what Danny needs!”

 

She whirls on him, leveling a venomous glare from behind the silky black curtain of her hair, pale eyes blazing with undisguised fervor. “What he did is so  _ selfish _ — ” she shakes her head, growling in wordless frustration, “I won’t let you do this bullshit!” Sam jabs one finger into Danny’s chest, standing on her tiptoes to hiss in his face. “I can’t be—  I can’t fucking  _ believe  _ you,” she cries through angry tears.

 

Tucker fumes, but keeps his voice level. “I know you’re upset, but— ”

 

“I honestly thought you were stronger than this, Danny!” Sam shakes her head, staring right into those muted blue eyes. She glares defiantly up at him for what seems like a long time, slowing her breaths and calming somewhat before the damning words escape her: “I won’t  _ forgive  _ you.”

 

Danny reacts for the first time to that, not caring to be subtle even as some members of band and sports teams begin trickling towards the locker rooms. He curls his lip minutely, and the shadows around him stretch too long and dark, carving deep gauntness into his face.

 

His eyes aren’t quite glowing, but they’re far too piercing to be human in that moment, sharp and wild and dangerous; their ferocity belying his unassuming posture with an oblique threat. To anyone passing by, ignorant of the true gravity of the circumstance, it would be nothing, but it shakes Sam to her core to be on the receiving end of a look like that. She feels like a piece of meat pinned beneath his gaze, and a treacherous inner voice reminds her of how minuscule she is against his power, and how lucky she is that he chooses not to use it against her.

 

Tucker moves slowly, placing a tremulous hand on Danny’s tight shoulder. The halfa turns on him with eerily slow precision, hooded eyes gleaming like chips of cloudy ice.

 

“I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs, reaching across his chest to ghost his cold fingers over the calloused edges of Tuck’s hand.

 

Sam fumes despite her mounting fear, “Stop talking like you’re saying goodbye, Danny.” She gestures animatedly towards herself, then to Tucker, “We’re not done here—  you can’t just leave your friends— ”

 

Danny tips his head at her, brows creased into a subtle frown. He walks slowly forward, and those few steps between them feel like eternity. Tucker’s outstretched arm drops back to his side.

 

“I’m a ghost,” he breathes coldly against her cheek, now standing so that their chests nearly touch. Sam can smell the metallic tang of old blood on his breath, and the hair on the back of her neck stands on end. Her body is screaming, a chorus of all the fearful prey-instincts to run and hide away, but Sam is frozen in place; unable to flee. She can only stare angrily up into his eyes, now glowing, blazing solid and steady and bright.

 

And brilliant, unmarred  _ red _ .

 

“We don’t  _ have _ friends.”

 

Then he wrenches away and shoves past her, stalking angrily off down the hallway. Sam spins in place to go after him, dumbfounded at his idiocy, but when she turns around the corridor is empty: he is gone.

 

“I can’t believe him!” Sam snarls, fingers curled against her scalp in frustration. After all of the support she and Tuck have given him, after all the times they’ve risked their lives alongside him, he has the audacity to ditch like he’s better than them; it makes her blood boil.

 

Tucker stares, curling his lip incredulously. “Him?” He splutters, “I can’t believe  _ you _ !” He throws his hands out at her, spreading his arms in a fruitless gesture of frustration, “You  _ know _ he’s fragile right now—  it’s selfish, and it’s dangerous!”

 

That sets a fire of indignation in Sam’s chest. “Really?” She spits in reply, “‘Dangerous?’ I don’t care what  _ you _ think, but  _ I’m _ not gonna tiptoe around shit that’ll make him upset, ‘cause  _ I’m _ not afraid of him. Danny’s a ghost, not a— ”

 

“He’s a ghost,” agrees Tucker, and Sam cuts herself off in surprise at his compliance. “But first, he’s a person. And he’s hurting.” 

 

With that the boy pulls her by the arm around the corner and into the nearby restroom, the girls’ room. He scopes out the stalls, confirming that they’re all empty before turning back to Sam.

 

She opens her mouth to respond, cold dread tickling at her chest, but he doesn’t let her, “This isn’t about me being afraid, or you not. It’s not about us. This is about  _ who _ Danny is, not what he is. Of all people, I expected you to know the difference.” 

 

“What am I doing  _ so _ wrong?” spits Sam, gesturing mockingly with her hands, open-palmed and derisively questioning, “What do I do that’s so awful that you don’t?”

 

The boy growls, frustratedly pulling at his curls. “We go over this again and again, Sam. Why do you never learn?”

 

“There’s nothing to learn!” She insists, anxiety chewing at her gut with a thousand needle teeth. “You’re the one who acts all high and mighty every time I say something you don’t like!”

 

Tucker blinks dazedly at her, mouth hanging open in affronted disbelief, “ _ I  _ act high and mighty?” He raises his voice, visible moisture gleaming at the corners of his eyes. “You go on and on about all the pointless bullshit you pretend to advocate for —  you pretend! You wouldn’t actually risk anything that  _ really _ mattered to you, would you? You do this kind of thing to piss off your parents, not because you care.”

 

He looks away, biting his lip and blinking back tears, “And you pretend to love him, too.”

 

Sam says nothing, bringing her smooth white arms up against her chest, tracing lines between the sparse freckles on her skin with her eyes. She refuses eye contact, brows pinched into a frown as she retorts, “You’re wrong. I love him.”

 

“No you don’t,” Tuck insists, voice quaking. “We’ve been over this, and I don’t know if you’re too conceited to get this or just too stupid.” Sam bristles at that, but he keeps going; she can’t bring herself to speak over his nearly-sobbing tirade. “You love the conc—  the  _ idea _ of Danny, and the  _ idea _ of me. But you don’t give half a shit about the real deal. Not about me and especially not about him.” Tucker is shaking, voice shrill with distress as he elaborates, “We’re weird, the both of us—” He glances uncomfortably down at his chest, “And your parents hate that sort of, I dunno, exotic shit like him and me. And you—  you hate your parents.”

 

He blinks one last time, and the tears roll down his cheeks, pooling in the anguished crease of his frown. She watches each tiny droplet glitter and tremble and then fall to darken the cottony weave of his sweatshirt. “There’s so much hate in you, Sam. Why don’t you care when we need you?”

 

Tucker scuffs his boot on the grimy laminate tile of the school bathroom floor, yellow-white and filthy. The silence of the moment is tender and fragile for only what seems like an instant, hanging in the air like mist before Sam’s ire blows it all away.

 

“I care!” She screeches without warning, scrubbing angry tears from her cheeks, “You don’t know shit if you think I don’t!” Tucker just stares at her impassively, mouth pinched tightly up by his unrestrained sobs. He shakes his head. “For—  I’m telling you, I care! You know it.”

 

“If that’s true— ” He just shakes his head again, pinching the bridge of his nose even as his weeping draws squiggly snake-lines down his cheeks. “Why don’t you ever prove it?”

 

Fresh indignation rises in Sam’s belly. How dare he? She grits her teeth, thrusting out an arm in frustration, “Why do I need to? I’m telling y— ”

 

“Don’t tell me!” Tucker finally roars, cutting Sam off. His angry voice echoes like a thunderclap in the enclosed space. She shrinks back against the nearest stall to retreat from his volume, glaring balefully back at him. 

 

His tirade gains momentum, “And don’t tell Danny! You need to  _ show _ —” He claws restlessly at his hair, curling his hands around the hem of his beanie. He crumples up the knitted fabric in his fist, kneading his fingers against the material and stomps frustratedly. “You—  you can’t just  _ get away _ with this shit, Sam!” Tucker gasps, growling in aggravation as he struggles to articulate his point. 

 

Sam takes a steadying breath, “You were always okay with me. You were  _ always _ okay with the way I’ve handled shit— ”

 

“It was never okay.” He huffs, leaning against the door, “Never. And I don’t know why I never had the balls to tell you sooner.” Tuck laughs humorlessly at his own self-deprecating joke. “You’ve never been fair to me, and especially not to Danny. We needed you—   _ he _ needed you! He needs you  _ now _ , and all you ever seem to think about is yourself.”

 

“Don’t fucking— ”

 

He curls his lip, disgust overtaking his features, “You know what?” He laughs again, shrill and frantic and furious beyond words, “I’m done! Danny cares too much, but I’m done. I don’t care anymore, Sam, about keeping you—  sparing  _ your _ feelings.”

 

Tucker turns on his heel, knuckles white around the strap of his backpack. He looks over his shoulder, silently fuming, “So fuck you. Don’t cover for me,” he orders bitterly, “and don’t you fucking  _ dare _ talk to Danny again.” He slams the bathroom door behind him.

 

Sam just stands alone.

 

* * *

 

The smooth cool of invisibility doesn’t soothe the prickling heat built in Danny’s chest. He knows that he should be guilty and angry and sad, but there is only a gaping pit in his belly that swallows up those vague impressions of feeling. He swallows over aching numbness as he stalks down the hall, passing intangibly through the few early birds that trickle in.

 

Danny picks up his pace, trotting soundlessly over the tile and phasing through the door. The strange sensation beneath his ribs does not abate but flare in the open, throwing waves of tingling numbness out to his limbs. The lack of feeling scares him as he slows again to a walk.

 

What he said to Sam is inexcusable, needlessly cruel and selfish, and the most chilling part of it all is how  _ easy  _ it had been to say it. To speak to her that way, callous words only ever spoken before with stolen voice, is something that would otherwise put his teeth on edge with righteous indignation, but Danny feels nothing. Not today.

 

A little voice in the back of his head says he’s being absolutely cold-blooded, then registers amusement at the dramatic irony of such a thing, but it all feels distant and foggy beyond the haze of unfeeling that clouds his brain. Danny just walks, not caring as he drops his invisibility in plain view of the suddenly-huge crowd of students loitering at the front of the building, waiting for the first bell to ring and call them to class.

 

Several teens nearest Danny jump and yelp at his sudden appearance, and he sees one girl shiver out of the corner of his eye. He is unaffected by the cold, but he can hear the crunch of ice crystals being ground beneath his shoes, and as they melt into water the mixed blood and ectoplasm still hardened in his treads comes loose. A trail of frozen slick ground and red-brown solute follows him in footprints.

 

His own heartbeat sounds like a procession of sluggish thunderclaps, the gooey  _ glub-tuhk _ of ectoplasm oozing through a system designed for watery plasma only reminding the young halfa of how utterly alien he really is. If he focuses he can hear one of the nearby teens’ hearts, a lively drumming of  _ ba-dum ba-dum, _ clean, easy-flowing blood that almost makes him sick with jealousy.

 

He shoulders through the milling crowd, glancing impassively over their faces. Danny’s feet carry him around the back lot of Casper High, past the grungy green dumpsters pressed against the side of the building, over the sun-bleached tar of the car park. He shuffles in the dusty gravel at the edge of the lot, phasing through the chain-link fence that is wound with encroaching foliage from scraggly Illinois woods.

 

Hickory, oak, and silver and red maples crop up some twenty yards from the fence, thin and domesticated by their urban habitat. They cast sparse shade over the weak brown grass that crinkles beneath Danny’s sneakers as he walks.

 

Each step feels heavy and automated as he counts them, a steady series of left and right that leads him of its own accord to an open half-circle of trees up on the hill, overlooking the patchy school sports field that is too rocky and uneven to be very useful for even casual pick-up games. 

 

Danny decides that he likes this spot. The small clearing is hemmed by needly bushes and more brown grass that gives way to browner dust and gravel. Silty mud always slides down the hill during rainstorms and slicks the school field to renewed futility.

 

Feeling inordinately light and dizzy, Danny sits in the cool dying grass. He bows his head between his knees even as his sneakers slide in the loose dirt, latticing his fingers at the back of his neck and trying to focus on his breath. Inhale four seconds, slow, smooth. He makes the wet feeling of air on the roof of his mouth into his cynosure, tickling his nose and filling his chest. Exhale seven seconds, slow, smooth. Feeling the cool of his breath, the slight disturbance of the air as his lungs deflate into the open, he wets his dry lips. And again.

 

This time, he looks around him. “Yellow grass,” he begins listing colors in time with his breaths, “green field, gray sky, brown tree, orange leaf. That’s five.” Danny sighs, lifting his head. He curls his fingers against the prickly dry ground, reveling in the sensation of dirt under his fingernails. “This is real. I’m real. I’m here.”

 

His throat hurts as though he’s about to cry, but Danny feels better- he  _ feels _ again, feels grounded and present and in control of himself once more. Guilt gnaws at his belly, making him feel ill despite the righteous anger that fueled his outburst. He bunches his legs up beneath himself, kicking clumps of dead grass away as he stands and shakes the dust from his pants.

 

He doesn’t know how to feel but at least it’s an option, and he decides that’s a start.

 

That still leaves the issue, however, of dealing with his former family and friends. Tucker, for his part, is petrified of Danny, and not without good reason. It would be torturous to force his presence on the poor boy. As for Sam, as much as he’s loathe to admit it, Danny isn’t at all happy with her. He feels stupid for lashing out at her like that, but in the end the way she responded to the bad news feels… off. Something about it is deeply hurtful to him and he doesn’t quite understand why. 

 

Maybe he’d just expected more sympathy, but that is utterly moronic. Sam has always been the ‘tough-love’ type, urging him to grow a spine and push through his problems whenever they should arise. Having known her for as long as Danny has should be enough for him to have realized that, but her dismissal is still wounding.

 

Sighing, Danny gets the remaining way to his feet and shuffles back down the hill, nearly slipping and falling on the loose dirt. Markedly more cautious now calm, he glances quickly around to see if there are any witnesses before phasing easily through the rusty chain-link fence and stalking briskly over the pavement. Eyes and ears peeled for potential trouble, he skirts the school building and enters through the back, navigating the halls, now empty once again for class, to the barren locker rooms. There, Danny changes into his gym clothes: a huge jersey in school colors and loose black sweatpants. He feels a little exposed, but he has an elastic waistband to keep his pants up and a shirt that isn’t strangling his chest like Tucker’s ill-fitting clothes.

 

He distracts himself with dressing, evaluating his own physical condition in the bathroom mirror. It’s not good, but Danny’ll take it. The scar from the plasma burn on his shoulder is still puckered and raw, haloed by blotchy green bruises. Despite being mostly healed, accelerated by his dense meals of ectoplasm, the wound still twinges when he stretches, unsightly and writhing over lean muscle. Danny grimaces at his reflection, baring little ghost-fangs that make him cringe.

 

Hot tears prick at his eyes at the reminder of what he’s done, but Danny scrubs them away and turns his back on the mirror. As bad as he feels about himself and the sort of sick freak he really is, Danny knows that he is on his own now, striking out without a friend in the world.

 

Migrating to the Ghost Zone is the first thing that comes to mind, but even that is risky. Sure, the other ghosts there like to harass humans and generally cause chaos, but Danny doesn’t think most of them would actually want to  _ hurt _ people. Hell, they have a word in ghost-speak, a  _ slur _ , for crazed, wild ghouls. What if they ostracize him too? On the other hand, loads of them hate Vlad, so maybe shredding the elder halfa will actually work in Danny’s favor. However, that brings about the issue of his ghostly mentors. 

 

Frostbite might be the harder of the two to deal with, so deeply invested in honor, and likely unforgiving of even foreign taboo. Clockwork may even be worse given his experience with the original C.A.T. incident- he can easily decide that Danny is too dangerous and imprison him just like Dan for the rest of eternity.

 

He has few options, and none of them look particularly favorable.

 

Danny sighs, pressing his back against the wall and feeling the cool of the tile seep through his jersey. Why do these things always happen to him? The young halfa closes his eyes with that question in mind when his core lurches, throwing a sensation that can only be described as the feeling of regurgitating dry ice. He huffs a cloud of icy blue vapor that pools and dissipates against the ceiling.  Danny hesitates for a long moment, anxiety winding iron coils in his belly as he listens to the chatter of students in passing outside the door.

 

Gritting his teeth, he goes ghost. 

 

* * *

 

It feels like there are fire ants nesting in Sam’s chest. She can’t stop the sudden barrage of tears that blur her vision into watercolor smears, stinging at her eyes and turning her makeup into cloudy grey trails that stain her cheeks. Sam sobs with ugly, gasping breaths, clutching her hands helplessly to her chest. She snivels and cries, choking on the tears that slide over the bridge of her nose and plop onto the grimy floor.

 

She doesn’t want Tucker to be right. The worst part is that she isn’t even sure what the truth is, not anymore. She sinks heavily to her knees, tucking her awkward legs beneath her and tugging at the front of her skirt. Sam whimpers, shivering at the cold of the tile. Is this really what her best friends have thought of her the entire time?

 

It occurs to Sam that, as much as she doesn’t know her friends, she doesn’t even know herself.

 

All of her life, Sam has wanted to be different. She wants to  _ make _ a difference—  or, she used to, at least. She’s not sure now if that would be for better or worse. Every cause for ‘good’ she’s ever advocated now feels like a mistake, each heroic cause like more fluid in her lungs until Sam can’t breathe. All of those false good deeds feel like sins now, strangling her with their selfishness.

 

Danny’s career as a ‘superhero’ has always felt noble and clean and easy to her. He uses his powers to advocate for good, to help people, and in that way Sam likes to think they aren’t that different. Maybe he might make her better by association, and they can help each other— 

 

But she’s wrong.

 

It isn’t pure and it isn’t safe, and of all people Sam should know better. The image she’s assigned to him in her mind is completely arbitrary, a simple veil of good-Samaritan showmanship and shallow celebrity designed, very explicitly, to distract herself from the truth. Now it’s too late for her to change, because Sam has already ruined everything with her idiot willful ignorance. It was all right there and she’s just been too stubborn to face it. 

 

She grunts, scrubbing the film of tears from her cheeks as she gathers her legs beneath her once again. Sam stumbles against the sink, glaring back at herself in the grungy mirror. Her face is no different, but she almost doesn’t recognize herself. There’s shame glazing the strange pale eyes that watch her, guilty sobs still shaking her shoulders.

 

Fantasy is heroic. Reality is messy and selfish and dangerous, balancing on the breaking point, and so is Danny.

 

So is Sam.

 

She throws the washroom door open, stalking down the hall with new purpose. Her boots squeal against the laminate tile as she picks up the pace, shouldering roughly through the fresh throngs of students that populate the corridor. Before she knows it her brisk walk is a jog, then a breathless sprint. Her footsteps are heavy and echo sonorously within the enclosed space, ricocheting off of matte blue lockers to beat the air like thunder. 

 

Pairs upon pairs of curious teenage eyes watch her. Sam can hear blocks of the crowd titter and hum, eager for theatrics—  and for as much as she wishes otherwise, she cares enough for their judgment to sting. That’s all it takes to solidify her position—  Sam has cared far too much for the wrong things, electing to appear virtuous rather than actually be such. It’s only now when it’s bitten her in the ass that she realizes her mistake, but now she knows enough to make things right. Danny comes first.

 

She’s missed the morning period, of course, but Sam still has an upcoming class that she shares with both Danny and Tucker—  most of their day-to-day class blocks align, so she has plenty of chances. She shouldn’t need them, though. Sam has wasted far too much time already, and every second is precious.

 

Danny was right to snap at her, Sam decides. His choice of words was harsh, but perhaps it was exactly the sort of thing she needed, and still needs. The sort of willpower it had taken to overcome that awful hypnotic spell, way back during his first year of undead existence, took effort.  _ Real _ effort, the kind that Sam has been all too sparing with these days.

 

Sam is sure it’s a message. She doesn’t really believe in omens, or karma, or signs from the Gods—  those are the sorts of things that she likes to say ironically, mostly in order to flaunt her alternative lifestyle in front of her parents—  but maybe now is the time for her to listen up, have a little faith.

 

Goodness knows she needs it.

 

She heads into her next class, dropping her purple backpack onto the floor and settling in an uncomfortable seat. Notebook and pens spread across the desk before her, Sam is prepared with all the plausible deniability she needs to speak to Tucker again.

 

The bell rings and the remaining students fill the room, some rushed, others not caring. A few give Sam concerned looks, likely taking note of her eyes still red from sobbing, but no one addresses her to point it out. She struggles not to care when conspiratorial whispers being to flit through the room.

 

Sam steels herself and waits, but even as the teacher arrives and begins to take attendance, Tucker doesn’t show. She begins her lecture of the day after urging the students to take thorough notes, promising that this will be on the test, but still no Tucker. Sam takes sparse, bare-bones observations down into her notebook, constantly glancing towards the door in hopes that Tuck will somehow appear. He never does.

 

Sam raises her hand slowly, and the teacher nods amicably to her, asking, “What is it, Miss Manson?”

 

She wets her dry lips, feeling naked beneath the teacher’s watchful, matronly gaze. “May I use the restroom?”

 

The professor nods again, holding out a signed hall pass for Sam to take as she marches briskly out the door, muttering a half-hearted “thanks” on the way.

 

Naturally, Sam goes not to the toilet, but directly outside. She nearly slips on a patch of black ice on the way down the concrete steps, yelping and windmilling her arms to regain her balance. She stops to look down at the ice, puzzled. The air is brisk, perhaps unusually chilly today, but not by much, and the lingering summer sun beats down strongly. Trees have only barely begun to shed their leaves, and it hasn’t rained in at least eight days. There is no reason for the ice to be there, except…

 

She backtracks somewhat, taking in the dull yellow-grey cement of the stairs. It is marred by old scuffs and cracks, ill-kept and well-worn, but what catches Sam’s attention is the muddy red footprint frozen into the thin sheet of ice. Straight, shallow treads mark it not as a running shoe but a converse—  like the ones that Danny wears.

 

Sam follows the trail of ice carefully, noting tints of pink and brown where it becomes more cloudy and opaque, and tiny crystals poking up from the edges. Definitely unnaturally formed, almost certainly Danny’s. The trail winds across the lot before petering out several yards from the grungy chain-link fence.

 

Briefly at a loss, she hesitates there, but something catches her eye as she scans the length of the fence: a vaguely hominid-shaped spot where the blackened rusty links are white with frost. Sam trots up to the breach, examining the nearby links for any sign of damage. The ice is slowly melting, forming a shallow puddle at the base of the fencepost, making mud out of the dusty soil that’s slid down from the hillside.

 

Wincing, Sam braces herself, sticking one toe through the links to use as a foothold. She pushes upward and throws her other leg over, hooking the deep treads of her boot on the fence. Her legs tremble as she tries to keep her balance without falling onto the sharp wiry top, but she manages to pull herself all the way over without injury.

 

The motion is not nearly as fluid as it would’ve been if she had had a running start, and took a disappointing amount of effort to execute, but it is sufficient for now, so Sam moves on. There is no more trail of ice to follow, but faint blood-tracks are visible in the patches of dust, shallow and too light to have beaten down the grass. If she hadn't been looking for them, she is sure she would never have noticed. Sam follows the trail as best she can, picking her way between each spotty piece of evidence that Danny was ever there.

 

At the top of the hill Sam finds a patch of flattened brown grass, damp and glazed with feeble frost. Shoaly troughs have been cut into the loose soil where shoes slid down the side, disappearing into the sparse vegetation. Further wet footprints dot the dry pavement, but they’re patternless, and lead Sam nowhere.

 

Frustrated, she paces over the clearing, crushing grass beneath her boots with heavy steps. She looks out over the useless expanse of the football field, a veritable fen behind the school. The grass twitches with sliding dew, only indistinct impressions of motion from this distance. Even in the brisk biting air her cheeks feel flushed, hot with mixed exertion and emotion.

 

Sam blinks fat tears from her lashes, lurching on her feet, swaying unsteadily through her sniffles. Panic prickles hot and tight inside her chest, chewing at her churning guts and leaving Sam thoroughly nauseated. The air is far too still, stagnant with thin-stretched fog as far as the eye can see, eating up far-off vaulted hills in a smear of faint gray on the horizon. Cars hum not far away down the road in front of the school, but the world is soundless save the soft rustling of urban vegetation in the breeze. The throbbing silence only makes her cries seem louder. She can’t find him.

 

The brittle quiet is shattered by the heavy blow of an explosion that rocks the school.

 

* * *

 

He breathes hard between his teeth, chasing the trail of spiritual cold that Danny leaves behind. It’s not yet intense enough to form frost on their surroundings, but Tuck knows that it will be soon if things continue to decline. Tucker’s boots screech shrilly against the tile as he skids to a hard stop before the front door of the school. He wets his chapped lips, dark eyes darting desperately from side to side as he struggles to track the chill.

 

Cool air seeps from under the door, reflective of the brisk day outside, and for a harrowing moment Tucker fears that it will dilute the trail too much for him to carry on. He sucks the sharp air in between his teeth, still panting raggedly as he scopes out the immediate area. The creeping, ghostly cold snakes down the hall and around the corner, unnatural and dangerous, hardly muddled by the nippy outdoors. It makes the hair on Tucker’s neck stand on end, but he soldiers steadfastly along the corridor.

 

Tucker slinks unsteadily around the corner, head down and jaw set. He knows that Danny should give him no reason to fear, but that doesn’t stop the sense of foreboding that festers in his belly as he follows the path. The further along he tiptoes furtively down the hall, arms held close to his body, the more uneasy Tucker feels, until he fears that any moment now his legs will betray him and book a sprint back to the safety of warmth.

 

He wishes that he’d listened to that desire to flee, because his fruitless journey doesn’t lead him to Danny at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you would like to support further writing and art from me, consider pledging to my patreon: http://patreon.com/dweeblet


	7. VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: violence and gore (eye trauma, broken bones, mouth trauma, etc.), cannibalism mention, language, description of sensory overload / panic attacks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A solid ~10,000 words, I think? A little less. This chapter is a biggin'.

Vlad looks vaguely like an owl, all indignantly puffed-up and pale, albeit rather green in the face. “When you said we’d lure something from the Ghost Zone,” he snarls, shuddering queasily at another rough leap of the vehicle over the curb, “I didn’t think you’d be dumb enough to call something like _this_!”

 

“ _I’m_ not,” snaps Jazz in reply, “ _Your_ vultures laid the bait!”

 

A huge clawed paw slams into the pavement where the GAV had been only moments before, throwing concrete shrapnel and ectoplasmic sparks in a sheet of debris that strikes the sturdy old hummer with a small hurricane. All three passengers cringe and grit their teeth as chunks of cement hammer the armored vehicle and gobs of ectoplasm sizzle and hiss against the fortified steel exterior like acidic phlegm.

 

Jack keeps his foot on the gas, swerving through the narrow streets in the Ghost-Assault Vehicle, wide-toothed treads screeching against the asphalt as he pulls a hairpin turn, narrowly dodging the full force of the monster’s body-weight as it pounces on the pavement.

 

Jazz clings to the passenger seat armrest with all her might, steely determination glinting in her forest-green eyes. “We’re almost there,” she says, but her voice wavers. The monster roars behind them, slimy maw stretched open in the wide shape of a trillium to reveal shark-rows of filthy blackened teeth, all slick with clots of ectoplasmic saliva that fizz and pop on the pavement when they fall.

 

Its head is thin and long, something between reptile and avian, and its girthy body ripples with hard green scales that shed shrapnel like water. Jack presses a button and a square-barrelled cannon pops from its compartment on the GAV. He grits his teeth as the weapon winds up, but its firing kicks hard enough to rock the tank, spitting a huge sphere of crackling green energy at the monster.

 

Jazz spins in her seat, eyes wide. “Don’t kill it before we can get there,” she starts to say, but her heart does a flip as the blast flattens wide like a water balloon against the beast’s greasy hide, spreading thin until it dissipates in a shower of hot green sparks that pepper the GAV and the street below with scorch marks.

 

The monster screams its outrage, bounding forward and thrashing its tail. It only has two limbs proper, but both are heavily muscled and sturdy, ending in heavy forefeet tipped with crescent-moon claws.

 

“Call the police,” Jazz orders through gritted teeth. “This’s gonna get messy.”

 

Vlad grunts his affirmation, reaching for his cell phone with shaking hands. It nearly slips between his fingers as the GAV rocks and swerves, but he clutches it tight and dials. The dispatch’s voice comes airily through the speaker only to be met with the halfa’s strangled snarl of “Ghost!” as Jack slams the brakes and screeches to a stop, burning rubber on asphalt as the monster overshoots its target and smashes into the side of a warehouse.

 

“Casper High,” he snaps into the receiver, “It’s on the way!”

 

Jazz tightens her grip on the armrest as the GAV starts up again, tucking her head as the monster’s weight jostles them. She clenches her teeth at the crackling inquiry of “Phantom?” from the other end of the line— Vlad actually growls, eyes blazing briefly vermillion against cobalt.

 

“I don’t care,” he hisses, and through the venom in his voice Jazz can hear a wavering note of concern. “He’s not in a good way, and it’s not worth the risk. Send the police _now_!”

 

The dispatch stutters, but concedes. The scraggly stretch of urban forest that hems the campus flies by in a blur of thin Illinois maples, all little more than sparse-branched smudges against their velocity.

 

Breathing hard, Jazz throws a furtive glance at her father. Jack’s face is puckered in a strange expression of despair, brows pulled tight and high on his forehead, well-worn laugh lines gone slack with his grim expression. He loves Danny more than anything— she suspects even more than herself. He cares, and he wants his son to be happy and to be safe: dead or alive or something in between.

 

It’s their mother Jazz worries about.

 

Sirens scream not far away. Whether police or ambulance Jazz isn’t sure, but either way she takes it as a good sign. Their call for help has been answered, she decides— hopes, at the very least. The beast behind them screeches in keening layered tones, frothing and surging forward as the overworked GAV stutters. It turns its huge head on them, using the flat top of its snout in an attempt to overturn the vehicle.

 

The front treads howl against the asphalt, making smoke as they struggle for purchase with one end of the vehicle off the ground. Jazz yelps, pushing against the back of her father’s seat as gravity does its work and she begins to slide forward.

 

With nowhere to go the GAV trembles and snarls in place. The violent shaking of the machine’s body jostles the passengers inside, and Vlad whimpers as his bad shoulder is shoved against the armrest. Jack growls, trying to push in reverse against the monster, but it only tosses its head and jerks the trailer hard enough for Jazz to be shoved against the seat in front of her. Her seatbelt locks with a click and cuts her neck as she falls, and hot blood drips down from her clavicle to stain the grey fabric beneath her.

 

Vlad hisses through his teeth, digging his fingers into the plushy mesh of the seat. Cold ripples in a wave through Jazz, and she can see her father shudder before the screaming resistance on the rear bumper lets up entirely. The hummer leaps forward, treads squealing on the asphalt as the monster ghost behind them stumbles and falters at the sudden lack of opposition.

 

He slumps back against the seat, a faint sheen of sweat coating his face. Jazz’s breath hitches in her throat as a wet spot blooms from his shoulder, dark red and brown beginning to bleed through his wrappings and stain his borrowed T-shirt.

 

She says his name, unbuckling her useless seatbelt to twist around and assess his condition. His forehead is scalding against the back of her hand, and slick with feverish moisture. “You know better,” she breathes, climbing over the back of the seat to join him in the back.

 

“Is he okay?” Jack asks, thunderous voice subdued to an almost-normal volume in his concern. “He used his ghost powers to get us out of there, right?” His voice sounds wet, but Jazz can’t see her father’s face. “Is he okay?”

 

Jazz shakes her head. “I don’t know how exactly the intangibility messed with his shoulder,” she says briskly, taking off her already-bloodied cardigan to dab at the reopened wound. “But it’s bad. He’s already hurt and weak and he just made it worse!” Vlad’s head lolls, half-lidded eyes flicking dimly between Jack and his daughter. “Dammit!”

 

She tears her abandoned sweater into strips, pulling down the neckline of his shirt to gain access to the wound. Blotches of dark blood stain the minimal bandage job her mother had done, welling through the material and pooling there, staining Jazz’s hands and making red smears across her tank top.

 

“Dammit,” she gasps, pressing hard against the source of the bleeding with her free hand. Vlad whimpers softly, but he does not resist, and Jazz uses her other hand to wind strips of knit wool tight around his arm and neck, desperate to staunch the flow.

 

The ghost monster is too quiet, and there is too little time as the school bears down on them.

 

“Hurry,” she begs her father, “we can’t keep this up!”

 

He grunts his affirmative, hunching lower over the wheel as if that might speed up the GAV. Jack glances back to check on the others, face flushed and eyes glittering wet. The monster looks  no more tired than when they started but the Ghost-Assault Vehicle is on its last leg, overheated and damaged by the fighting.

 

Hoping under his breath that it isn’t smart enough to have learned from the last time, Jack hits the brakes once more. Mercifully, the ghost beast bounds right over the GAV, but this time it turns around, teeth bared in all their terrible glory, thorny scales standing high on end as it bristles and snarls its outrage.

 

“Shitfuck,” he snaps eloquently, loudly and harshly enough for Jazz to jump a little from the backseat. Jazz braces herself, heart pounding at a hummingbird-pace as the ignition stutters and spits. She listens and watches in terrified rapture as her father stomps the gas, struggling in vain to get back in motion as the overworked engine stalls.

 

In a stroke of vicious luck, a pair of squad cars speeds by, sirens blaring and lights up to blinding. The ghost snarls and whips its heavy tail, curling its scythe-claws into the asphalt as it spins to chase the moving targets.

 

Jack swears again, slamming a fist on the dashboard as the GAV continues to balk, helpless, in the middle of the street.

 

The police and ghost alike keep speeding towards the school.

 

* * *

 

Every ragged breath sends panic singing through his veins. Tucker is deafened by the roaring of his heartbeat in his ears, by the blaring alarm and the thunderous bellowing of the ghost-beast behind him. It screams and roars in layered tones from a three-sectioned jaw, wide open and split to reveal row upon row of serrated black teeth, jutting like bent steak knives from the monster’s rotten green gums.

 

Tucker’s lungs burn and his stomach hurts, muscles screaming for relief as he pushes himself yet again, narrowly dodging a clawed forefoot smashed against the tile. The force of the impact throws up plaster dust and shards of linoleum that prickle at his bare skin and choke his throat like ash. The other students are already hidden away in safe rooms: Tucker is alone, the only target.

 

He swerves haphazardly around a corner and through the lobby, hoping for his life that his small size will be enough to outmaneuver the monster. It isn’t.

 

The beast just howls again, thrashing its huge claws and dragging its scaly belly in wide, powerful turns, crushing concrete and drywall like nothing more than cardboard with its girth. Tucker blinks the tears from his eyes as he rolls from beneath a desk, skidding and skinning his knees as he stumbles back to his feet and bolts for the door.

 

Outside is pleasantly room-temperature for only a moment: the beast’s heaving breath on his back sends gusts of freezing air up his shirt and down his neck. He can hear the screeching of the ghost alarms from within the school, the scrabbling of the monster’s huge claws on asphalt as it wriggles free of the too-small school door, taking wood and dust along with its thrashing mace-tail.

 

Something slams into Tucker from the side, human-sized and warm. The ground beneath them shakes as they roll in a tangle of limbs over the sun-bleached car park, and Tuck gasps to catch the air that’s been knocked out of him.

 

He stumbles up to his feet, pulling the other person with him. Sam. Her face is flushed and wet with tears, pale eyes wide and terrified. Tuck looks back behind them to see the ghost-beast’s claws digging ruts into the pavement where he’d been only moments before.

 

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he praises breathlessly, but the lull is short and Sam cannot respond. He takes her by the arm as the monster regains its bearings, sprinting with all his might across the parking lot despite his heaving chest and stinging muscles.

 

He screams into the open, keeping as fast a pace as his aching lungs can manage, burning legs threatening to give way beneath him. The yowl of police sirens grows deafeningly louder: tires screech into the parking lot, walkie-talkie static like wire and gravel filling the air beneath a cacophony of shouting voices. Tucker blinks hot wetness from his eyes, stumbling to the relative safety of a patrol car. He effectively throws himself into the arms of a disgruntled officer with Sam at his side, panting hard against the frayed blue of her uniform and breathing in her cigarette-smell with every gasp.

 

At least he’s not binding today— he’d be a real goner, in that case.

 

Snarling, the ghost monster looms over them. Its bulbous red eyes shine with animal malice, long vines of thick green grool swinging from its three-sectioned jaws. Tucker can feel Sam shake as she holds him, and a terrified fervor overtakes the law enforcement that came to protect them.

 

A yell draws the beast’s attention, raw and visceral and hurt. “Back the fuck off!”

 

Danny hovers only a few feet off the ground, a great deal below the beast’s resting height, but the volatile sense of potency that rolls off him in waves makes him seem far more intimidating. Sam breathes his name, disbelieving and terrified. Electric green power crackles over his deceptively human form, making his aura throb with untamed energy— and that’s wrong.

 

Tucker has spent time with his friend as Phantom before, and despite the vague chill, he’s never felt so deeply unsettled as this, never overwhelmed by this prey-instinct that makes his pulse rise to a rabbit’s pace. Something in Danny has changed— something changed _him_ , and perhaps the scariest part is that Tucker doesn’t know why.

 

Hackles raised on both sides, Danny and the monster circle each other. Two pairs of wild eyes stare, calculating and dangerous, two sets of lips curl back to bare warning teeth. The ghost-beast’s heavy gait is hard to read, but Danny moves with uncanny precision unusual even for the halfa’s enhanced physical prowess. He’s on edge, the glazed disks of his eyes shining with single-minded focus, an eerily inhuman look that Tucker can’t quite place.

 

Murmurs of concern wind through the waiting police force as they lower their guns. The unsettled officers don’t know what to do. The tension in the air can be cut with a knife, thick with fear and confusion— the paradoxical hero of Amity Park now seems just as alien as the monster he’s fighting.

 

The policewoman holding Tucker absently pats his head, curling her fingers beneath the hem of his beanie to entangle them in his curls, and he is grateful for the soothing contact. “Something’s wrong with’m,” she breathes against his head.

 

He wrinkles his nose against her smoker-breath and replies in a shaking voice: “I know.”

 

She clutches him tighter, and Tuck can feel her breath shudder against his ear as she squeezes him. He can feel her trying to turn him away from the fight, but he refuses to look anywhere else. He wants to see. _Needs_ to see. Sam looks with him.

 

Danny and the monster are equals here, each stalking circles around the other and waiting for an opening. Anything is fair game, and one false move is enough to finish the fight. Without warning, the halfa breaks the cycle, stumbling back— and the monster lunges, all snapping jaws and lashing tail. Danny chases his feint with a liquid roll that leaves the ghost-beast’s face to be slammed into the pavement with a sickening crack, throwing up chunks of concrete and splatters of green blood from its broken teeth.

 

The teen backs off, hands raised defensively as the monster disengages itself from the parking lot. He snaps at it in foreign syllables, a motley of lilting eastern roots and guttural old-english sounds that mesh musically together over a buzzing undertone of ghostly power: the dedicated language of the dead.

 

Tucker doesn’t know what it is that Danny says, but the monster isn’t pleased. It roars in strange booming notes, barbed black tongue writhing against the confines of its mouth as it snarls those alien words. The beast’s speech is simple and lacking intonation, but it’s surely angry, garbled by animal ire as it repeats its bare-bones phrases.

 

“Oh no,” Sam chokes, and Tucker squeezes her hand despite himself.

 

At this Danny falters, snapping another foreign command at the looming monster, but it only bristles and screeches in reply. His voice catches in his throat and breaks there as he shrinks, lambent green eyes wide with terror— all his bluster and bluffing is useless against the mindless fervor of the ghost-beast.

 

Still screaming, the monster bucks its girth and slams its mace-tail into the pavement, narrowly missing the comparatively tiny halfa as he leaps away. Danny cries out as he hits the ground, the makings of a roll giving way to empty flailing as the beast stomps and smashes at the ground yet again. Without something to disperse the force of impact, it all comes crashing down on his body with an audible snap of bone as he tumbles limply over the lot.

 

Tuck bites back his tears as his best friend slides across the asphalt and remains there, unmoving. Sam screams right next to his ear, but he can barely hear her. “Fuck,” he chokes. “Y’gotta get up.”

 

Danny’s body shudders, limbs shaking as he gathers his legs beneath him, propped up with his good arm. He stumbles upright, panting hard, and leaps into the sky, legs dissolving into a lashing spectral tail that propels him like a bullet through the air.

 

Even as the halfa ascends Tucker can see his injured arm held, awkward and limp, close to his chest. Danny uses his good hand to throw a stinging volley of ectoblasts down at the monster, banking in a sharp parabola overhead to strike from every possible angle of attack as the beast lumbers and sways in circles. It snaps its huge jaws like a dog hunting flies, whipping its head and biting the air as Danny darts out of reach, dives back to land a blow, and shoots right back out with bloody black teeth on his tail.

 

Tuck squirms in the police officer’s grip, curling his fingers into her uniform blouse and pushing away. “Let go,” he orders quietly, but she squeezes his arm.

 

“It’s not safe,” she tells him, puffy brown eyes glistening with worry. Her lips are pressed into a tight pink line, creasing the corners of her mouth with apprehension. “Stay here, please.”

 

The monster finally seems to slow down, stamina evidently waning under the constant assault. Danny is far worse for wear, exhausted and bloodied, but his pale eyes brighten some as his opponent shakes its body and throws its head, looking disoriented.

 

Tucker shakes his head, forcibly pulling his arm away. “I can’t,” says Tucker. “He needs my help.”

 

Sam grabs the officer’s arm and yanks it off of Tucker. “Go!” With that he breaks away from the policewoman’s grip, diving for his backpack. Tuck’s heart is roaring in his ears, each breath a desperate gasp that burns his throat. His hands shake as he drops his bag, fumbling with the zipper and tearing through it until he can feel the smooth curve of a thermos within its pockets, chilly metal that turns hot against his sweaty fingers. He snatches the device like a lifeline, holding it close to his pounding chest.

 

Danny whips his head to track the sudden motion as Tucker sprints down the line of cruisers, eyes burning with frightened tears to match the searing ache in his overstressed muscles. He shouts wordlessly towards the fight, waving the sleek metal cylinder of the thermos up above his head as he runs. The halfa’s dark brows pinch into a disapproving frown, but he bunches his tail and jets right towards Tucker.

 

He throws the thermos up into the air and Danny catches it, lashing his tail behind him to spin back towards the monster that roars and slavers over the pavement. Its saliva strikes the ground with sharp hissing sounds, dissolving into green steam against the asphalt.

 

The thermos whines as it charges up, and Danny braces himself. A brilliant cone of blue energy erupts from the mouth of the device, encompassing the ghost-beast in its glow. The light only intensifies as the monster thrashes, slamming its heavy feet and tail on the ground in feral outrage.

 

Danny grins savagely at that, all bloodied lip and exhausted eyes as the creature seems to finally give in.

 

His victory, however, is short-lived: The blue beam netting the ghost flickers and breaks up like a dying flashlight, and electric feedback crackles along the outside of the thermos. The monster roars one wicked scream after the other, struggling and raging— and winning.

 

In an instant all of that blinding power from the thermos gets sucked right back in, ballooning out from the creature and converging back on Danny. The following explosion is achingly bright, neon blue and black smoke rolling hot from the ruined ghost-catching device.

 

Treads screech on asphalt, but the distinct heavy sound of the Ghost-Assault Vehicle draws only peripheral attention as arcs of angry blue lightning crackle and leap through the air.

 

Danny flies back from the blast, tumbling head over ghostly tail through the air for only an instant before dropping like a stone. He hits the pavement hard enough to send spiderweb cracks through the concrete, and a gush of slimy green blood spurts from his mouth at the impact.

 

Tucker screams. He leaps across the wreckage of the sidewalk to stumble at Danny’s side, running his hands through his best friend’s blood-matted hair and touching his cold face. He can hear Sam raging against the police officer that holds her, screeching and sobbing to be let free, to see Danny. The young halfa growls pitifully through clenched teeth when Tuck presses on his ribs, and even more so when his arm is jostled.

 

Jack Fenton stumbles out of the GAV just in time to see the ghost boy squirm. The older man’s wide eyes dart from Danny to the monster to the ruined thermos abandoned on the ground, and understanding dawns on his sweaty, pallid face.

 

“Shit, no,” Jack chokes, and he spins back to the trailer. He mouths something into the window that Tucker can’t hear, but it doesn’t matter. Danny’s green blood is like dry-ice water that burns his hands as he wipes the trail away from his nose, but he refuses to break contact.

 

Jazz comes out of the GAV with an equally ill-looking expression, green eyes glassy with unshed tears and dainty hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. She has another thermos tucked under her arm, and, of all people, Vlad emerges behind her with another. He is dressed in only boxer shorts and a bloody band shirt, looking sick and pale, but there is fire in his eyes.

 

Blood— this time red, not green— still glistens through the dark stain on Vlad’s tee. He’s still bleeding from whatever ugly wound lies beneath his shirt, but his steely blue eyes go straight to Danny, wide and terrified at the sight of the robust young hero twitching on the ground in a puddle of his own ectoplasm.

 

He throws a glance to Jazz, who returns it with an expression of utter grief, something so intimate in its horror that Tucker would think she had done this to her brother herself. “No, Danny,” chokes Jazz. “Little brother—” She edges closer, shaking hands outstretched to touch him.

 

Danny growls through his teeth, wriggling and wrapping his tail around himself. He props himself up on his good arm, baring sharp white fangs in a grimace. He shudders and hums, condensing his tail into a set of legs and struggling to his feet. He shoves Tucker away, and the same with Jazz. Danny, they realize, is trying to face the monster again.

 

* * *

 

It is using the lull to nurse its grotesquely smashed face, licking at the gaps of its uprooted teeth, trying to rub embedded shards of pavement out of its nose and sensitive gums against its forelegs.

 

“No!” Jazz snaps, and she grabs her little brother by the arm. She can’t help the little ripple of cold that runs down her spine as she touches his skin, icy beneath her fingers. “You can’t. You’re hurt.”

 

Danny glares up at her with venom in his gaze. “ _Someone_ has to,” he growls through bared fangs. She can see him swaying even as he tries to straighten himself, burning green eyes drifting unfocused towards the ground.

 

She makes a decision. “No,” repeats Jazz in a softer voice, and she scoops his legs out from beneath him, holding her arm under his knees and the other hand pressed against the tender small of his back. He whimpers again through his teeth as she touches his broken ribs, arching his back away from her hands, but he does not phase out of her grip or otherwise attempt to overpower her.

 

Tucker watches in near-silence. “She’s right,” he decides hoarsely. “You can’t keep this up— I can’t— Danny.” He cuts himself off, mumbling into his hand. Tears glisten at the corners of his eyes, but he makes no sound.

 

“What’ll we do?” Danny’s voice is small and raw, crackling pitifully in his throat, but strangely lacking intonation. Despite the green blood crusted over his split lip and down onto his chin he looks less like a soldier and more like a child in that moment. Jazz can feel something ache in her chest at that, to see her stubborn little brother reduced to such apathetic defeat.

 

She blinks wetness from her eyes, planting a ginger kiss between his brows. “I don’t know,” Jazz admits, inching slowly towards the GAV. “But this isn’t for you to do alone, not anymore.”

 

Danny whines low in his throat. His eyes are unfocused and distant, darting between the monster and his father, who stands off with a wide-mouthed cannon balanced on his shoulder. “I—” He chokes a little, setting his jaw. “The ghosts come after _me_ ,” he croaks. “My haunt. It’s not for you— for humans to deal with. It’s _my_ fault, not theirs. Not yours, not dad’s. _Mine_.”

 

Jazz shakes her head, sidestepping around their father. They artfully switch places, Jack keeping the monster’s attention on the glowing green barrel of his weapon, waving it from side to side as the ugly ghost-creature sways along. He urges Tucker to the safety of the police-barrier, and Danny squirms as Jazz sets deposits him inside the GAV, on the seat. She can’t help but yelp aloud at the sudden jerking that wracks her brother’s body.

 

Tiny arcs of green electricity are visible leaping over Danny’s back, eyes wide and glassy with terror. She follows his gaze to find Vlad, shaking almost imperceptibly, waiting with a first-aid kid in the backseat.

 

All that escapes Danny’s mouth is a strangled sob, tiny and choked and desperate. “I’m sorry,” he bares his teeth in a grimace that makes the older man flinch, blinking back tears and biting his lip hard enough to send a fresh trickle of green ghost blood from the reopened cut. “I’m so sorry.”

 

Vlad’s steely cobalt eyes soften at that. “I know,” he all but whispers, taking the boy into his lap. Danny wriggles, tossing his head and bucking away, but he freezes when Vlad places a shaking hand on his head. “Shh. It’s okay.” He takes him closer, curling his fingers into Danny’s pale, blood-matted hair. “I know.”

 

Jazz watches the exchange with dismal fascination. Gunshots thunder outside, and the monster roars. Danny’s gloved fingers claw at Vlad’s neck as he wraps his good arm around the older halfa, as though desperate to verify his realness in the chaos. Danny cries quietly into Vlad’s chest even as Jazz approaches, pressing her own warm hand into his back.

 

Danny whimpers at her touch, and when his legs dissolve Jazz fears that she’s spooked him and he’ll flee at any moment into the gunfire, but he doesn’t. He wraps his freezing spectral tail around her waist, pulling her into a haphazard embrace stretched between the three of them.

 

A long moment passes in silence only broken by shallow breathing and the outside sounds of fighting. Jazz trusts her father to hold his own with the help of the police, but she knows they can’t defeat the ghost-monster, not without backup. It is too powerful to be captured in the thermos as is, so they need to weaken it first.

 

Suddenly alert, Danny lifts his head. At first Jazz thinks he’s just sticking his tongue out, but when he huffs in quick, short breaths through his mouth she realizes he’s tasting the air like a snake. He wrinkles his nose, looking Vlad over with glistening eyes until he seems to notice the blooming patch of red soaking through the shoulder of his tee.

 

“Shit!” His voice is still raw and sorrowful,  but this time it’s laced with a deep, aching guilt that bites to the bone, intimate and unyielding. He swallows hard, reaching for the first aid kit on the seat.

 

Vlad shakes his head, eyes half-lidded and tired. “Don’t worry about me.” He speaks hoarsely, but with sincerity. Danny won’t take that for an answer.

 

“I will,” he says stubbornly. “I’ll worry about you— this is my fault!” He gasps in shallow, desperate breaths that nearly drown out the muffled gunshots, “Oh— oh my— shit! It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. All of— all of it. It’s— this is all me!”

 

Jazz can recognize a panic attack like this from a mile away. “Danny,” she says sharply. He flinches away from her hand on his good shoulder, eyes full of tears. She repeats his name, squeezing gently, hoping that the gentle contact will help to ground him.

 

Danny blinks owlishly at her, mouth crinkled into a thin line as he struggles not to cry. “It’s me,” he insists softly. “It’s ‘cause of me.”

 

She shakes her head. “No, little brother. It’s not you.” Jazz strokes his hair, combing out bloody mats with her fingers, “It’s never been just you.” She turns her gaze outside. Yellow flashes from the barrel of each officer’s gun. The bleak gray sky echoes a chorus of firecracker pops as they fill the monster with bullets, only for them to be phased out. The useless shells tinkle when they hit the ground like frozen raindrops, shining with viscous green blood that hisses on the pavement.

 

Vlad follows her gaze, flinching when the ghost-beast screams, whipping its tail against the concrete. Its movements seem to have lost some vigor, but it shows little sign of slowing down enough to be properly captured, not yet.

 

Danny’s pointed ghost-ears are perked almost imperceptibly forward, brows pushed high against his sweaty hairline. He slowly unwinds his tail from around Jazz, flicking the tip against her elbow in a way that’s perhaps meant to be reassuring. He disengages from Vlad, floating wobbly through the air to rummage through the inside of the GAV. After an awkward moment of vacant staring and swaying in place, Danny seems to collect himself and phases a hand through the seat.

 

Jazz arches a brow when he pulls it out with a green glass tube between his fingers. It is probably a solid foot long, sealed with ridged metal caps on both ends— it is, she realizes, a waste cell from the ecto-filtrator on the Fenton portal. She knows that Danny keeps his stash squirrelled away across the neighborhood, some places in the school, at his friends’ houses, and even back at Fentonworks, but the presence of an ectoplasm cache here in the GAV still strikes her as surprising.

 

For his part, Vlad pales, looking ill. Danny closes his teeth on one end of the cell, crushing the metal like paper between his sharp premolars. He tips the open tube almost vertically against his lips, gulping down thick wet clumps of the dense ectoplasm. His adam’s apple bobs precariously as he guzzles the acrid citrus pulp of ambient ghost-flesh, and when he’s done he drops the tube to shake.

 

He shudders, but Jazz watches his ghostly aura flutter like a heartbeat and settle on brighter. A strange scraping noise whispers from his shoulder, and with a startling crack he rotates his arm again, relocating it without batting an eye as he rides the high of the ectoplasm. Danny still looks haggard and sick, but there is renewed brightness in his eyes.

 

“I’m helping Dad,” declares Danny.

 

Vlad narrows his eyes at that. “You’re not doing that,” his voice is rough and almost imperceptibly warbling. “Not without backup.”

 

Jazz nods. “Mr. Masters is right. If you go out there, so will we.”

 

The young halfa’s eyes flash with vitriol, lip twitching as though he’s making to say something, but he only nods, brows pinched into an angry frown. “Fine. Don’t get hurt.” He seems prepared to storm defensively off, but he turns at the last moment to request, “Please.”

 

That makes Jazz’s heart ache, even as she retrieves an ecto-shotgun from its place beneath the front passenger seat. She slings the weapon over her shoulder, crawling over the seats and taking a single-handed pistol from the glove compartment. Jazz tosses the smaller of the weapons to Vlad.

 

“Your ghost half is out of commission,” she says matter-of-factly, and throws a dangerous look towards the billionaire. “You’re not overworking yourself any more on my watch.”

 

He looks displeased but does not resist, cocking the pistol with shaking hands. Vlad and Jazz trail Danny as he exits the GAV, hackles up and fists tight at his sides. The monster writhes and screeches at the hail of useless metal bullets are phased through its hide, snapping its jaws and lashing its tail. The police officers have built a barricade of cruisers parked end to end between them and the creature.

 

“The guns are an annoyance to that thing at best, but they’ll keep its attention.” Danny tosses his head to Jack. “Us and Dad’re gonna be the real damage-dealers here.”

 

Vlad nods, watching Danny with wary eyes. Jazz puts her hand on the older man’s shoulder and ushers him to join Tucker behind the barricade.

 

* * *

 

 

Danny shifts from foot to foot, watching their backs, before hopping into the air. He darts over to his father, blasting a chunk of concrete out of the air before it can hit him. The monster yowls and smashes its tail into the ground, throwing even more debris their way, and Danny conjures a filmy green shield to protect them from the shower of dust and stone.

 

He grits his teeth against the rain of blows, pushing the barrier outwards so that it slams into the ghost-beast in a wall of crackling green energy. Jack looks up at him with wide, mournful eyes for only an instant before dipping his head and aiming his cannon.

 

For his part, Danny whips out his tail and banks tightly overhead, charging ectoblasts in both palms. He shoots larger projectiles out of the air, unloading his remaining shots down onto the creature’s hide. The blasts do little visible damage, but he hopes that they’re at least wearing the monster down.

 

Jack is surprisingly quick on his feet for a man of his size, and manages to dodge or weather the smaller chunks of concrete with almost complete success. Despite the small victory, however, Jack is bruised and tiring. He is human and fragile and low on endurance— even Danny is worn to the bone from the violent fight. They cannot keep this up for much longer.

 

The cannon Jack holds fires slowly, and with strong recoil, but supposedly with a great deal of power. The beams of green energy, however, just seem to be absorbed into the monster’s scales— he can’t reach any weak spots, and neither can Jazz or Vlad, not with the ghost-beast constantly moving and snapping at Danny.

 

Jazz fires her shotgun over the hood of a cruiser, but the spread falls off and loses power at this distance. Still, a lucky green pellet from behind the barricade strikes one of the creature’s ugly bulbous eyes and it screams, an earsplitting sound that shatters cruiser windows and forces all humans present to duck their heads and cover their ears. Green blood is visible trickling from Danny’s, but he persists even in the absence of consistent cover fire, taking advantage of the lull to lunge forward with a strangled cry.

 

They wrestle in a grey-green blur of flashing teeth and glowing eyes. The monster bucks and tosses its head, but Danny clings hard to its ridge-plated scalp, scrabbling with his fingers at its eyes and nose in a desperate attempt to keep his advantage.

 

Jack hesitates, afraid to hit Danny in the struggle. “Let go!” He cries, and the boy responds almost immediately. The halfa pushes off, disengaging from the creature. He bolts back towards his father, eyes wide and chest heaving as the monster lunges after him.

 

Danny spins at the last possible moment to grab the ghost-beast by the snout, skidding hard against the concrete as it pushes down on him. His limbs shake visibly from the effort of resisting the creature as it bears down upon him, but he turns to snarl through gritted teeth for Jack to “Get the other one!”

 

The blast from the cannon meets its mark in a spray of red and brown slime as the monster’s eyeball explodes. It screams, layered and shrill and feral. It tosses its head, throwing Danny back as his strength finally fails, but Jack is there to catch him, fretting over the fresh ectoplasm trickling down his face.

 

Danny stares up at his father, unwavering even as Vlad and Jazz contain the crippled ghost-beast with one of their thermoses. One ear throbs and rings with deafening static, and words through the other sound as though filtered through water. He makes out Jack asking if he’s okay, to which Danny can only shrug.

 

“Everything hurts.” His admission comes out a hoarse croak, but it is heard.

 

Jack flicks his gaze to the clamoring officers and emerging civilians. “I’m proud of you,” he says, very quietly.

 

Hot tears prick at Danny’s eyes. He blinks them away with a pathetic half-grin. “I’m— thank you.” He sighs, releasing tension from his muscles. “We gotta be stealthy, meet back at the house. ‘M not in the mood to be outed to anybody else today.”

 

“You’re hurt,” argues Jack.

 

“I know,” Danny almost laughs, but the pain from his bruised ribs turns it into a strangled snort. “I’ll be okay to fly home.” He pinches his brows together, scowling. “Or, I might be—” His voice catches in his throat as Jack helps him into a sitting position. “Where’s Mom?”

 

Something crackles pitifully in Jack’s tone when he admits, “I don’t know.” He worries his lip. “She went out to hunt for you— Phantom you. I couldn’t stop her.”

 

“Can anyone?” quips Danny. A lopsided little smile flits over his expression, gone as soon as it appears. “Go back to the house with Vlad and Jazz,” he orders, looking thoughtful. He wrinkles his nose, pinching his lips together. “Yeah. Do that. I can come along, invisible, naturally.”

 

Jack scowls. “You’re riding with us, not flying— that’s final. I don’t want you getting any more hurt than you already are.”

 

Almost immediately, albeit with some unspoken reluctance, Danny replies with a wobbly nod. “Oh— okay. I think I’d like that.” The Phantom’s eyes have always seemed unnatural, too bright and sharp as though cut of glass rather than flesh, but in this moment his gaze is hazy and soft, and Jack can see his son more clearly than ever through his undead visage.

 

A chill tickles Jack’s fingertips as Danny disappears. He stands slowly, brushing cement dust from his shoulders. His back aches and his legs feel like jelly, but he’s okay. He cannot see but still imagines Danny shuffling tiredly to the GAV, phasing in through the wall, and flopping down on the seat.

 

Vlad and Jazz are easy enough to spot in the veritable sea of blue police uniforms, but getting to them and corralling them back to the trailer is another story entirely. Jack is tall enough to see over most everyone’s heads, and he uses his bulk to shoulder through the crowd.

 

Tucker is tiny and shaking between Sam and a female police officer. He and Sam both cry quietly, sweaty fingers tangled together in a grudging embrace.

 

“Are you two okay?” Jack bends down to meet their eyes, tucking a stiff clump of Sam’s hair behind her ear. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

 

Tuck blinks owlishly up at him through cracked glasses. “I’m okay,” he says, lips trembling. “We can’t— we can’t find Danny, see—”

 

“I know.” Both teens take pause, hanging between fear and relief. “I _know_ ,” Jack repeats, with more purpose, and their eyes widen. “I have for a little while now,” he admits. “I’ve been an idiot.” Jack sighs deeply, blinking exhaustion from his eyes. “Danny is being well taken care of with Jazz and me. I want you two to go home and let your parents know you’re safe and sound.”

 

Sam opens her mouth to protest, but Tucker squeezes her hand. “Mr. Fenton’s right,” he all but whispers. His voice is raw and more than a little wounded, maybe even afraid. “And Danny needs space, anyway.”

 

“I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to see you when he feels better,” Jack agrees, “but right now he’s hurt very badly, and we have a lot to deal with at home.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “Too much.”

 

Tucker nods feebly. “Yeah,” he croaks.

 

“Let’s call our parents.” Sam sighs along, abnormally subdued, and Jack straightens to his full height. He pushes through the crowd over to Jazz and Vlad next.

 

“You two alright?” asks Jack, looking them over. Jazz looks weary but ultimately unharmed, and while Vlad’s shirt is still damp with dark red blood, it looks like the worst of the bleeding has slowed.

 

Vlad glares at him, but reluctantly shrugs his good shoulder while Jazz offers an unenthused nod. “Been better,” she admits, “but we’re alive— or mostly, anyway.”

 

Jack can’t help but snort, “ha.” His little attempt at a chuckle falls dismally flat, even to his own ears. He swallows hard. “Danny’s waiting in the Assault Vehicle. He needs medical attention as soon as possible,” he jerks his head to Vlad, “and so do you.”

 

He blinks dazedly. “Alright,” his voice is hoarse and dull with exhaustion, eyelids drooping as he sways in place. The worst bleeding may be done, but Vlad has already lost too much blood.

 

“I’ll ride in the back with Danny,” Jazz announces.

 

Jack hums his agreement and corrals Vlad towards the GAV, opening the passenger door for him and helping him inside before turning around and checking on his children.

 

Danny is splayed awkwardly over the seats on his belly with his ghostly tail wound in a tight coil against his side. Green stains the corners of his mouth, and Jack can see another empty fuel cell clasped loosely between his fingers. His head is resting on Jazz’s lap, and she winds her shaky fingers into his sweaty hair.

 

“Let’s go home,” Jazz says, very quietly.

 

Something aches in his chest, but Jack nods along. “Yeah.”

 

He walks around to the driver’s side door and climbs into the trailer. He buckles himself in and fiddles with the ignition, huge hands clumsy and shaking. Everything feels as though it’s running through molten glass, tight and blurry and vague in his vision. The grey sky hangs impassively above them, draping a pale screen over everything, draining color from the trees and from people’s faces.

 

The growl of the GAV’s engine is muffled and watery in Jack’s ears. Through the distance and the haze he notices that ectoplasm smells almost exactly like human blood. In fact, he supposes dimly, if not for the fact that he’s a trained ectobiologist who knows what to look for, it would be exactly the same. Why hasn’t he ever noticed that before?

 

Jack keeps his eyes on the road, gripping the steering wheel for dear life, but the image is burned into the backs of his eyelids: the lab downstairs at Fentonworks is covered in blood. It reeks of blood. There is blood in tubes and in vials and just because copper is used as a replacement for iron, conducting electricity instead of oxygen, it is no less real. The lab downstairs is full of the acrid blood of people and things— alien things, but still people— with names and feelings and wishes, and that makes Jack sick.

 

Vlad leans over, queasy and ill as he is, and puts one of his cool hands on Jack’s, squeezing gently. “It’s okay,” he mumbles. “It’s going to be okay.”

 

His hand is cool, Jack knows, because lower temperatures amplify the conductive power of pure metals. A simple ecto-biological adaptation. Evolution.

 

Because life finds a way.

 

“I don’t know,” Jack admits tremulously. “I don’t know.”

 

Ambulance and police sirens yowl and resonate in the open grey sky, echoing between close suburban quarters. The rattly engine of the GAV keeps on growling. His heart pounds steadily in his ears. Every ragged breath of Vlad’s is a rush of thunder. Something in the dashboard creaks when the trailer hits a bump.

 

“Stop,” Vlad’s voice is low and smooth but the sound only adds pressure behind Jack’s temples. The quiet crackling in the other man’s throat is like nails on a chalkboard. The sky is too bright and the sirens won’t stop screaming. Someone honks their car horn some ways down the road, and it makes him flinch.

 

“Jack, stop.” He looks down at his hands— they’re shaking beyond his control, jerking and twitching with nerves that he cannot suppress.

 

He nods feebly. “Okay.” Jack puts his foot on the brake and eases the GAV to the side, pulling over into the breakdown lane with the intent of riding out the attack in peace— Vlad has other plans.

 

The halfa slots one of his little hands into Jack’s, stroking his thumb back and forth over his palm. “Look at me,” Vlad orders firmly, and he does.

 

“Okay,” he breathes. He can feel Jazz’s concerned gaze boring holes into the back of his head, brows pinched into a worried frown in the rearview mirror.

 

Vlad must notice his distraction, because he squeezes Jack’s hand again. “Ignore her. Just look at me.” He obeys again, slowing his breaths with herculean effort. Vlad’s face looks hollow and purple bruises ring his eyes. His lips are chapped and split towards the left side, and the crust of dried blood still flakes off of his shirt when he moves.

 

“Okay,” Jack can only whisper. He wants very badly to close his eyes, but he knows he needs to focus. “Okay. I see you.”

 

“Good,” a nod, “good. Listen.” In that moment Vlad’s steely blue eyes soften, just for an instant. “I’m sorry— breathe with me.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Something wet glistens in Vlad’s eyes, but he blinks it away. “Like this, alright.” Jack squeezes his best friend’s hand, and he squeezes back. “Good.” He twists in his seat, cringing through bared teeth as he stretches his injured shoulder. “Jasmine, can you drive?”

 

Jazz narrows her eyes, worrying her lip. “Yes. Dad, will you be alright back here with Danny?”

 

“Sure— I think so,” Jack nods to himself, clenching and unclenching his fists. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he folds them over his belly, nervously pressing his thumbs together. “Yes.”

 

Father and daughter emerge from the vehicle together, strafing awkwardly across the narrow interior of the breakdown lane in order to switch places. Danny whimpers and mumbles softly in his sleep when Jazz leaves him, but eagerly presses his nose into his father’s thick arms when prompted.

 

Danny— and Vlad for that matter— is not human, Jack remembers. Not only that, Danny is something that shouldn't exist at all, and that terrifies him. He is the product of a freak lab accident resulting in the fluke hybridization of a living thing and an extradimensional undead entity. Polar opposites have adverse reactions. Vlad should have died. Danny should have died— but here he is, breathing steadily in Jack’s arms.

 

He can't help but feel immeasurably lucky in that moment. Yes, they are battered and bruised inside and out, but they’re alive. His children and his best friend are alright, and things are going to finally simmer down and everything will be able to go back to normal again— if Maddie can accept this.

 

That’s what worries Jack perhaps more than anything. He looks down at the little ghost in his arms. His face has grown harder and more angular over the past few years, and his chest is far broader than it’s ever been. Ghosts aren’t meant to age, but the Phantom has gone from petite to gangling and now finally seems to be filling out, just like Danny. His shuttered green eyes are curtained by thick frosted lashes, and soft breaths woosh between his grey-tinted lips. It’s the face Danny makes when he dreams, no doubt, brows slightly furrowed but not stressed, like he’s thinking very hard. It takes very little effort to swap white and black in Jack’s mind.

 

Jack doesn’t think his wife is able to see the same thing.

 

Until this point it’d been something that only cemented his bond with his wife. Where he is open-minded and gullible, she is cautious and set in her ways. In science, they made a perfect pair, complementing each other’s methods. When he risks diving in too soon, Maddie is there to slow him and scope out the situation. When she is too stubborn or cynical, Jack is there to help her loosen up— but yielding to outlandish-sounding propositions regarding purely theoretical xenobiology is far removed from the real, human consequences at hand; yielding to the reality of their son.

 

“We’re almost home,” Jazz tells him. Jack looks out the window to see familiar suburbs rolling by, but instead of comforted they just make him feel sick. The grey sky washes any liveliness away like death pulls warmth from a corpse. The dread pooling in his belly makes the sight of home just as repulsive.

 

They pull into the driveway without any trouble, easily hopping the shallow curb between street and car park on the GAV’s heavy treads. Jack can hear Vlad release a shuddering sigh from the passenger seat ahead of him. They wait in anxious silence before he finally manages to speak.

 

“We should check if Madeline is home,” Vlad suggests. He cringes through his teeth, twisting in his seat to face the back. “Jack, could you work on waking Daniel? You two can stay here while Jasmine and I check the house.”

 

Jack nods, humming noncommittally in response. “Sure,” his voice catches in his throat, and his stomach lurches with anxiety.

 

“Shouldn’t take more than fifteen or twenty minutes to sweep the house and disable the anti-ghost security systems for Danny. It’ll be okay,” Jazz assures him.

 

He wishes he could believe her.

 

Danny stirs with little prompting. He jumps a little, tensing in Jack’s arms as the driver and passenger doors are shut with a pair of clunking noises. The boy blinks wearily up at his father, gaze calm and hazy for only a moment before his green eyes sharpen into something wild.

 

Without knowing what he does now, Jack might mistakenly gauge the expression as something overtly hostile and feral. The uncanny variations of a ghost’s features only make presented cues more foreign to the untrained eye, but because he is, for the first time, really looking, he registers a great deal of nuance in Danny’s features. His lips are not pulled back in a snarl, but crimped on the verge of tears and his tense body is not in preparation to pounce and attack but to flee and evade.

 

“Dad?” Danny’s voice quakes and crackles pitifully in his throat. His sharp green eyes dart nervously between Jack and the window, scoping out the van for, of all things, escape routes.

 

“It’s okay,” he tries to comfort the trembling boy in his lap, but Jack can feel his own voice break halfway through his feeble attempt at reassurance. “Vladdie and your sister are checking out the house,” Jack explains. He knows that it is important for his son to be filled in, but somehow still feels useless in relaying such arbitrary information. There are so many things he ought to have said and done differently, and so many things still to be said and done in the hours ahead.

 

The young halfa nods slowly, worrying his lip. He straightens himself and disengages from Jack, stretching in such away that his spine realigns with a series of audible pops. Danny yawns widely, displaying the faintly iridescent green flesh inside his mouth. Jack tries not to look at his distinctly extended canines or the premolars and incisors that have misshapen and shifted to accommodate them, but he can’t keep his gaze from wandering for long.

 

Danny seems to notice this, snapping his mouth shut with a click of colliding teeth. Some traitorous part of Jack’s hindbrain imagines the sound of those teeth closing on flesh and cracking bone— but the visceral fantasy is dispelled almost as soon as it appears. Danny is crinkling his eyes the way he always does when embarrassed, and his cheeks are flushed a deep green with shame.

 

“Sorry,” his mouth twitches into the beginnings of a smile, but his lip only wobbles as he blinks tears from his eyes. Danny avoids his father’s gaze, rubbing at the back of his neck out of habit.

 

Guilt floods Jack’s throat, choking him. He stutters, stumbling over his own words before spitting out a shaky “it’s okay—” but Jack stops himself, putting one hand on Danny’s shoulder and rubbing his thumb over the boy’s collarbone in what he hopes is a soothing gesture. “No, no. You shouldn’t be sorry at all, hear me?”

 

Perplexed green eyes blink owlishly back up at him, and Jack finds the sudden strength to continue. “If anyone should be sorry,” he decides aloud, “it should be me, kiddo.”

 

“Why?” Danny’s voice is tiny and raw from screaming. “I’m not human. I lied to you and Mom for years— took _advantage_ of you— I—”

 

Jack shakes his head, huffing loudly through his nose. He pats his thigh and Danny wiggles back over the seat to put his head in his father’s lap. “No,” he scolds gently. “Don’t say things like that. Don’t think ‘em, either.” He cards his fingers through Danny’s platinum hair, cool and smooth as water beneath his touch. “You did nothing wrong, Danno. You did—” Jack can’t help but choke a little. “You did everything right, buddy.” Goodness knows _he_ didn’t, not as a parent. “You did your best.”

 

“It wasn’t enough,” Danny mumbles into his arm, folded beneath his chin.

 

“Danny, buddy.” Jack can’t help but absently twirl silver locks between his fingers, and his son leans contentedly into the repetitive motion. “One man can’t beat an army by himself— why should you?”

 

The halfa scowls, grumbling. “I’m not fighting an entire army. Not most of the time, anyway.”

 

“But you’re still just one person— and you’re only a child.”

 

Danny whips his head and forcibly disengages, visibly bristling. “No,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “I may be only half a man,” His green eyes burn into Jack as he blinks his tears away, masking grief with vitriol. “But I stopped being a child when I died in that basement, Dad.”

 

Jack resists the urge to recoil. His skin crawls beneath Danny’s gaze and icy guilt claws at his throat as he realizes that his son is right.  

 

And his son is dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	8. VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild violence, language, implied suicidal ideation

 

Maddie is too far away when the news reaches her. She’s already scoured the immediate neighborhood, pacing the streets. Grungy green dumpsters, sticky-mouthed and shadowed by apartments, gape at her from the corners. She can’t help but feel that they hide predatory dangers from within the alleys. Maddie picks her way between streets, investigating every side road as she pulls her search out towards the central, slightly more urban area of Amity Park. The Phantom is the type, clearly, to finesse its way into a secure situation before it strikes, luring its victims into a false sense of security in order to— Maddie swallows hard against the wad of disgust that rises in her throat— consume human beings as prey.

 

With that in mind, she rationalizes, rounding a bend, it’s likely to seek a crowd to blend into. Chalky red dust rubs off from the brick onto her gloves as she pushes around the corner. Maddie needs to find this monster ghost fast before it can do any further damage, so she locks onto the strongest signature in the immediate area on the Specter-Detector in her hands. The device starts to chirp as she spins, so she sets her path and gets to moving. The pavement is dry beneath her boots, gritty and cool from the brisk autumn air. She feels at once alone and surrounded in the urban emptiness.

 

Her head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton, mind racing. Something burns at her temples like her brain is working overdrive to parse through all of the information at her disposal. What does she know? Phantom likes to play the hero, amassing fans and admirers, luring them in with honeyed words and too-wide grins. No one ever seems to notice the fangs beneath its lips—and now, Maddie fears it is too late for them to learn.  

 

How many disappearances have there been in the past few years since the Phantom has appeared? She struggles for a moment, running through a nebulous mental catalogue of news stories and telephone posters. Despite her efforts, Maddie cannot  think of many off the top of her head, but she is sure that doesn’t discount the option. Does the ghost somehow raise its victims as malevolent spirits themselves— ones that can disguise themselves as flawless humans, ectosignature and all?

 

The idea of a hidden army of ghost-slaves makes Maddie feel sick. She slows her pace, pausing against the side of a drugstore. Chills lick at her back. In her mind she sees her friends and family and neighbors reduced to little more than puppets of flesh, eyes glassy and dead and lit red from within their hollow pupils. Her gaze sweeps the sidewalk, wide and on high alert. People walk back and forth and go about their business, talking to their phones and to each other. The clamor fills the air with bright noise and sweet smells as some middle schoolers sell hot coffee and cocoa from a cardboard stand for an upcoming winter clothing drive at their school.

 

Any one of them might be ghosts. They could be all around her at this very moment. She has no way of knowing even where they are, let alone how many there may be or what they’re capable of—but Maddie stops herself. She can’t afford to panic, especially not with so many people around: they’ll ask questions, slow her down—and she needs to get a move on finding Danny, and more importantly, the monster that took him. 

 

She knows that she is not thinking rationally, and continuing as she is will only push her thoughts into an all-out spiral that she will not be able to control. Scientifically and statistically, she soothes herself, such an extreme outcome is astronomically unlikely to occur. Such an advanced ability to deceive even the most sensitive equipment is rare, even in very powerful ghosts. Then, of course, to practice it at such a scale and timeframe is certainly beyond any known ghost’s capabilities. Maddie must not give in to frivolous hysteria and superstition.

 

She is a scientist; she intends to act like one.

 

Instead, Maddie elects to focus on what she  _ does _ know, what decades of research have confirmed again and again: ghosts are evil and powerful. Their motivations are simple and selfish. As frustratingly enigmatic as the Phantom pretends to be, Maddie knows what makes it tick. She knows that if she someday peels it open it will be exactly the same as  all the others—something she had forgotten. She had let her curiosity and her childish hope get in the way of real science, and now the Phantom has gotten cocky because of it.

Her prevailing theory for the moment is that the Phantom must have figured out how to overtake a host for the long term. Maddie believes she’d once read about such an occurrence in her more fringe study of ghostly entities. For hundreds of years Native American people have told stories of evil spirits that consume their hosts and drive them to feast on flesh. Similarly, Filipino myth tells of a shapeshifting demon that eats its neighbors in the night. 

 

Either way, Maddie supposes, there are more than enough legends in that vein, and any one of them could be based in genuine ectoplasmic interaction. It would indeed be a breakthrough in her studies, she notes bitterly, but one that comes with the damning prerequisite of Danny’s replacement. She knows what she’ll have to do next.

 

Still, a throbbing ache fills her chest— which she knows is just her vagus nerve overreacting to stress— but a stupid, superstitious part of her wonders if her heart really is breaking. Her son, her  _ baby _ . She can’t possibly know how long ago he’d been taken by this evil creature. It could be as early as yesterday, but a treacherous little piece of Maddie wonders if it’s been more than a week, a month, or even a year.

 

An entire  _ year _ that her little boy has been gone right under her nose. The thought makes her throat tighten up even as she jogs briskly after the beeping blip on her detector. Maddie worries her lip, biting hard to stifle an anxious sound as it rises in her throat. She steels herself despite the fear roaring in her belly, picking up her pace to run through alleys and vault fences in her chase after the ghost. 

 

She sees it rounding a corner and snorts her indignation: a stout amstaff puppy bounds on clumsy paws, batting at a piece of garbage hanging from a smudged green dumpster. It is barely recognizable as a ghost to the untrained eye, but Maddie can see its faint silver aura and the tinges of green that bleed through its pale brindled coat, painting emerald shadows around its eyes and nose.

 

It yips once when it sees her, wagging its dark-tipped tail. A little piece of Maddie is amused by the observation that it goes round and round like a helicopter blade as it wiggles its rump in the air, but she hasn’t the energy to smile. She has a little bit more sympathy for animal ghosts— they are far more honest, simply  _ being _ . They want what they want and they are what they are, nothing more, no lies or tricks. Even then, it would be irresponsible to leave this one out in a populated area without knowing what it is capable of.

 

“Come here,” she says, holding out one hand. She moves the other slowly to her belt, reaching for her thermos.

 

The puppy blinks up at her with warm reddish eyes, little folded ears perking forward with interest. It trots over to her, sniffing at her fingers. The ghost-puppy licks at her hand with its filmy green tongue, pushing against her palm with its head in a demand for affection. It’s all so eerily  _ normal _ . 

 

Maddie has never had a dog herself, but the Foleys used to have one— a basenji mix with brilliant yellow eyes. The animal had been almost thirteen years old when it died, but she still remembers Danny, still in grade school, weeping openly when he’d been told that Chewy went to heaven. She hadn’t the heart to tell her son that heaven wasn’t real.

 

That image won’t leave Maddie’s brain, so she kneels frozen with the little needle-teeth of an undead puppy pinching her sleeve. The idea that her son would willingly open up to her feels inordinately ludicrous. For all her intellect, Maddie cannot quite figure out how they have gotten from point A to point B. Danny had been so much like Jack back then, with his heart on his sleeve and his mind written on his face. 

 

“I don’t know how it got this way,” she tells the puppy.

 

He would tell her everything about his day, how he thought he did on his schoolwork, what he wanted to do that weekend. When he was sad he would cry on her shoulder, and he would kiss her cheek when he was happy. He would show her all of his school projects and explain them to her with pride twinkling in his eyes. 

 

Danny loved her.

 

Now he is aloof and brooding, secretive. That is something that teenagers do, she knows. They get sensitive and embarrassed by their parents, moody and irritable. It happened with Jazz— of  _ course  _ it would happen with Danny. To think otherwise would simply be unrealistic, but even with that in mind something feels deeply wrong about the way Danny has acted, and it puts her on edge.

 

Maddie takes pause, thinking back on the initial incident. The Wisconsin Ghost had kidnapped her and Danny, of course, and took them down to an isolated location where no one would think to look. In vein with its typical theatrics, it was even trying to woo her, likely as a result of its obsession with romantics. She hypothesised that it would fixate on different humans until they passed away or otherwise left its haunt, and then pick a new target to start the cycle again.

 

She shudders a little. It was all par for the course as far as Wisconsin was concerned, but what happened with Phantom was something totally new and deeply unsettling. A clinical little piece of her makes a mental note that she may need to consider reclassifying the creature, but is by far overpowered by a rush of involuntary emotion that floods her chest as the memory. Maddie had never before then witnessed the Phantom possess a human being, but she hopes never to do so again.

 

The image, burned into her mind, brings bile rising in her throat. She knows that the Phantom is inordinately powerful for its apparent age and classification, but she has never seen a ghost so thoroughly  _ consume _ its host in the process of overshadowing. That’s how she knows it must be something long-term, that it’s been slowly eating away at its host and turning him into something inhuman—that must be it. 

 

That is the prospect that scares her the most, she realizes as the ghost puppy gnaws mildly on her fingers. That Danny is irreparably damaged from this nightmare, and she won’t be able to fix it. She knows that she needs to keep searching, but the sun has long since risen. Maddie has been hunting since just after midnight, and by now it’s been more than twenty-four hours since she’s last slept— discounting the sedation that lead to her kidnapping.

 

But the idea of idling and doing something so trivial as resting makes her feel sick with guilt, so Maddie only pauses to rest her body as long as she takes the opportunity to exercise her mind.

 

Her efforts yield no good news. The potential that Danny has been taken and replaced grow more and more probable the more evidence she factors in: his distant behavior, dropping grades, and utter disregard for the will of his parents could all be simple symptoms of adolescence, but Maddie fears that it’s more than that. In conjunction with recent events, it’s all but damning.

 

Blinking dumbly down at the puppy at her feet, she tells it “I’m afraid he might be gone.” It does not respond, but its floppy ears rise a little at the sound of her voice, and in her mind Maddie decides that its raised brows are a sign of curious concern.

 

She hasn’t been blind to Danny’s injuries, either, and she says as much. “He keeps getting hurt.” 

 

Usually small things, as far as she can see, and he brushes them off when she mentions them. Excused by his history of clumsiness, Maddie has never considered that they might be the marks of an evil spirit testing the limits of its host.

 

That brings about the issue of the possession in Vlad’s basement. It makes sense that Wisconsin was there: it probably phased in through the ceiling and took advantage of the isolated and private location to enact its plans. The specifics of the location, she thinks, had something to do with how it died—in Wisconsin, of course. Why the Phantom was there, however, is an entirely different monster in Maddie’s mind.

 

Danny’s eyes hadn’t been glazed and lit with the dimness of a puppet when it took him. She had memorized all the symptoms of overshadowing: filmy discoloration of the pupil that set in within minutes, awkward movements and poor muscle control, as well as changes in body language and vocal style depending on the ghost responsible. That is all fairly easy to identify, even when the ghost might be trying to be subtle. 

 

But the eyes of a host are always, without fail, unfocused. Dull and distant like the open eyes of a sleepwalker.

 

Danny’s? They were sharp and inhuman and  _ hungry _ in that basement, full of something feral and base that made his body move like an animal, burning with the unnatural aura of a ghost. And they glowed— pulsing and bright and dangerous and unnatural, phosphorescent green that shone in the dark.

 

“I’m afraid.”

 

Ghosts can break a lot of rules, but Maddie knows with absolute certainty that humans don’t have XNA coding and chromosomes that build bioluminescent proteins in their eyes. That leaves only two options: Danny isn’t Danny, or Danny is a ghost. 

 

Maddie knows, of course, that Danny is not and cannot be a ghost. If he was, he would not be Danny at all.

 

That leaves one option: he has doubtlessly been replaced. 

 

Building a plan of attack in her mind, she stands, pulling away from the ghost puppy. She lifts her thermos to capture it, but it sees the device and immediately growls at her, red sclera filling its wild eyes. 

 

“No,” Maddie orders firmly. “I’m going to go find Danny!”

 

When she reaches for her gun, it snarls with an open mouth and begins to change, bones stretching and audibly grinding as they shift and grow. Thick, rippling muscle bursts from beneath its fur, which grows coarse and spiky in a line of raised hackles down its back. Claws as long as Maddie’s pinkie erupt from its growing paws, black and shaped like spades that cut into the ground. Its skull crackles and grows, lower jaw jutting out to display a lolling green tongue that drips between its huge lower canines, feral red eyes glowing as a thunderous growl rumbles in its wide barrel chest.

 

Maddie can’t help but shrink from the huge monster dog before her. Where there is muscle it is swollen and veiny, stretching the skin thin over it and yielding dark green bald spots all over the animal’s bulging chest and tree-trunk neck— and where there is not the creature is just misshapen bone, skeletal and sickening.

 

Its jowls drip with hot green saliva, swinging in thick ropes between its black lips. The monster-dog barks once, huge and deep, before jumping forward— right over her head.

 

Maddie gives chase immediately, pistol up and cocked in one hand and thermos whining in the other. She looses a sparse volley from her gun, but the bullets do little more than snap against the dog’s flank like paintball pellets. It barks and keeps running, and she keeps on chasing.

 

She needs to weave through cars that the dog-monster can leap over, but it’s panting hard, and looks to be running out of steam. It must be more bothered by her ecto-bullets than she thought. It takes only a few more minutes for Maddie to corner it in an alcove near from the Nasty Burger restaurant not far from Casper High.

 

The dog paces in the alley, whining and blinking at her with its dumb red eyes. Maddie approaches, thermos aimed and ready to go.

 

“You’ve caused enough trouble,” she pants. “I’m going to find my son!”  But the monster has other plans. It leaps at her, throwing its head up under her midsection— and she clings for dear life to its patchy mink coat as it begins to sprint in huge, bounding strides, huffing as it runs.

 

In only four leaps something happens: the Specter-Detector starts to scream, beeping high and quick in warning.

 

Two of the most intense ectosignatures Maddie has ever seen in her life show up on the little monochrome display. The monster-dog is taking her towards the school— right to them.

 

It carries her for several long moments, but she can hear its panting breaths. It slows, slavering and huffing before transforming back into a little tiny dog with an audible, almost cartoonish pop. The puppy, now with more energy, barks shrilly at her and nips at her heels, running circles between her legs.

 

“No,” she snaps, and the dog whimpers. “I need to find Danny,  _ now _ !”

 

At that the puppy-ghost howls mournfully, tail wagging, hopping in place on its chubby little paws. It pinches the toe of her boot between its thin white teeth and pulls, whining high in its throat. A ridiculous epiphany strikes Maddie, so she tests her hypothesis. “Danny? You know him?”

 

The dog wiggles and yips at her, spinning in place and wagging its tail. It turns away from her and barks, one paw held up in suspense as it looks back at Maddie. “Show me,” she orders. Suspicion makes her throat burn, but she swallows over it with purpose. This is a lead, whether she likes it or not.

.

Maddie uses the lull to check the Specter-Detector, and her heart drops like a stone to her feet. One signature, the stronger of the two, is new and unidentified, but presently marked as being CONTAINED. The other, however, is consistent with previous exposures. She taps a button to scan through her meager home database, but within only a moment she has a match. 

 

Labelled in bold, blocky letters as a PRIORITY TARGET is the Phantom.

 

Maddie stares incredulously at the ghost-dog, which blinks pleasantly up at her. It whines, pawing at her ankle. “I’ve never let a ghost go on purpose before,” she tells it. “But I owe you a favor.” The dog doesn’t seem particularly devious as it is dumbly destructive, but the idea of being indebted to a ghost doesn’t sit well with Maddie. It makes her stomach turn, but she promises it, “Just this once.”

 

The puppy snuffs and sits up to lick her hand before trotting away behind her. When she turns around, it is gone.

 

With that said and done, Maddie turns to her detector. The Phantom’s signature is moving quickly away from Casper and towards Fentonworks. She hesitates, torn between pursuing the ghost and investigating the school on the off chance that Danny—the real one— is there. Jack is home, she reasons, and despites his failings he is a good distraction at the very least while the security system takes care of any threat. The ghost may have attacked the school, and Maddie doesn’t think she can go off without checking to find out whether her son or his friends are there, and if they’re okay.

 

Tucker and Sam would notice if Danny wasn’t himself, Maddie reasons, assuming that his replacement has been relatively recent— so there is still hope that he’s nearby.

 

She takes off at that, sprinting down the road to the school. Her legs are sore from hunting since the wee hours, but Maddie is still strong and fit, and she reaches Casper within only a few minutes of running. She stops to catch her breath, trotting around the corner only to be met with a wide barricade of police cruisers.

 

Their alert lights spin in brilliant red and blue that all but blind Maddie as she approaches. The squad cars are parked end-to-end along the curb and into the school lot, and a veritable sea of mixed student civilians and blue-clad police mill about the area. 

 

Yellow tape is already going up around the scene on makeshift wooden posts and traffic cones, blocking off wide swaths of destruction around the school: the front door is smashed upwards and collapsed in on itself, and huge ruts are carved deep into the pavement, seemingly from giant claws. In some places the concrete is crushed and broken so badly that it cannot be traversed, and scorch marks pepper the bleached asphalt with deep green burns.

 

Maddie watches as pale-faced teachers line up their students, clipboards in hand as they count heads and make sure all of their charges are unhurt. Names can be heard, called high and clear over the chaos as each student is checked off and herded into safe groups. 

 

“Ecenarro, Paulina!” is met with a strangled, “here,” voice wet and thick with tears. A red letterman jacket is draped over the girl’s trembling shoulders, bunching her tight curls awkwardly beneath the collar. She doesn’t even care to fix them. Paulina just cries softly into her hands as a balding teacher escorts her to a growing crowd of students waiting to be picked up by their parents.

 

Maddie pushes through the sea of officers and faculty and students, hot tears pricking at her eyes as she surveys the destruction and fear. Anger roars in her belly at that. How dare this monster ghost go and cause this distress, this pain, and expect to get away with it?

 

She purses her lips, blinking moisture from her vision as she taps the round, balding teacher— Vice Principal Lancer, if she remembers correctly— on the shoulder. “Is Danny here? Is he okay?” The words come out sharper than she intends, at once stern and wavering. Maddie silently begs herself not to break down crying right then and there.

 

Lancer’s grey-green eyes are tired and glazed as he looks her over, which reminds Maddie that she must seem a real mess: frazzled hair bunched in sweat-stiff waves and deep circles beneath her eyes, still red and puffy from staying up and sobbing and ready to do so even more.

 

“No,” he admits in a thin voice. “Not yet. So far—” he wets his chapped lips and swallows hard. “So far we’ve yet to see or hear anything from either of your children, Mrs. Fenton.” At the anguished expression that doubtlessly twists her face, Lancer amends. “However, you should talk to the local law enforcement,” he advises, pity in his eyes. “I heard them mentioning your husband, so it’s very likely that he rushed here and took the kids home as soon as he learned something was amiss. I believe Principal Ishiyama was up there as well.”

 

“Thank you,” Maddie says numbly. She turns on her heel and walks briskly away from the school. She wants to run home but her legs ache. She’s been running and hunting for hours and hours now, and leaden fatigue weighs heavily on her limbs in the absence of adrenaline. Maddie pushes wearily through the crowd, shuffling over dusty pavement through the throng of students. 

 

* * *

 

Danny doesn’t talk, but he stares through the window in tandem with Jack to watch Jazz walk briskly back over to the GAV. Vlad is not behind her.

 

“It’s clear,” she confirms. “Mr. Masters is resting right now and he seems to be doing okay, but we need to pull out the big kits to wrap him up properly, eventually.”

 

Jack nods, swinging his legs over the seat to exit the trailer. He spreads his arms to his son as he turns around, and after only a moment’s hesitation Danny slithers into his hold. He can feel the cold flesh shaking with exhaustion beneath his gloves, and Danny collapses limply against him. He might be scared; Jack doesn’t know.

 

Vlad lifts his head when Jack opens the door, rolling over onto his good arm from his place nestled on the sofa. The sheets over the cushions are still stained with dry blood, and the needlepoint blanket from before is draped over Vlad’s shoulders. He blinks wearily at Jack, clearly exhausted.

 

“Need me to move?” He mumbles. “Hate to be in the way.”

 

“No,” says Danny before Jack can respond. “You should rest. You need it.”

 

Vlad allows a slurred “okay” before dropping his head and nestling himself deeper into the sofa. Jack can see the teal strips of Jazz’s sweater still bound around his neck, now purple and brown in the middle from the bleeding. 

 

Jazz holds up a huge black nylon backpack in both arms. “Big kit,” she explains simply, and drops it beside the coffee table. She kneels down on the floor and unzips one of the bag’s many pockets, rifling through first aid supplies while her father carries Danny over. Jack watches in anticipation as Jazz pulls over gauze pads and sterile sponges, rolls of adhesive tape and butterfly strips pushed aside beneath her deft fingers. “Pull up your human form, would you?”

 

Danny grumbles, slipping from his father’s arms to sit cross-legged on the floor. “It hurts less as a ghost,” he complains, but transforms back into a living—at least more so than before—boy with a shimmer of silvery green light. Jazz gets right to work.

 

She helps her brother to wiggle out of his gym shirt, supporting his bad arm while he pulls it over his head. Jack resists the urge to gape at the patchwork of scarring that covers his son’s body: the treelike tendrils of a lichtenberg figure mark his electrocution in the portal, veiny and green and eerily alive, but surrounding that are countless old scars. Sets of small white lines cover him, but a long, winding gash from his lower left shoulder blade to the right small of his back looks among the oldest, shaped almost cartoonishly like stitches. Horrified, Jack realizes that’s exactly what they are: amateur home sutures healed over, buried beneath puckered scar tissue. 

 

Danny straightens the offending limb as best he can at Jazz’s request, and in turn she applies gentle pressure at various places. She just goes about her business with practiced hands, ignoring all the ugly wounds that cover her brother’s bare skin like she’s seen it all before. Something aches with mixed pride and shame in Jack when he thinks that she looks like a professional. “Does that hurt?” She asks, and Danny automatically answers with a “six.”

 

“That means eight,” Jazz explains to no one in particular. “It doesn’t  _ look _ visibly broken, but that doesn’t discount the possibility of a stable break.” She turns to Danny this time. “Jeez, haven’t gotten this busted in a long, long time. We’re gonna splint it, ok?”  

 

He barely nods before Jazz has a universal foam-padded splint under his arm.

 

“Kinda your fault,” Danny accuses, half-jokingly.

 

She molds it carefully around his wrist and wraps it meticulously once it settles, securing it in place with wound gauze and bandage strips. “W-what makes you say that?”

 

“You lured the snake here.” He crack a wobbly smirk. “Knew I’d smell it and come running, you big nosy jerk.” 

 

“How else was I supposed to find you?” Jazz pouts. “You disappeared! Wrecked the boomerang and Mom keeps the good scanners to herself, so it’s not like I had any other way to find you.” She digs into another pocket in the big first aid kit to pull out a folded triangular bandage, close to a yard long and a little more across. “I didn’t know if you were okay.”

 

Danny snorts, expression softening despite his pain. “Get something smaller next time.”

 

“Fine, fine—but that part  _ was _ Vlad’s fault. You relocated your shoulder,” Jazz observes. “Does it still hurt much? Anything broken?”

 

Danny looks thoughtful, flexing with gritted teeth. “Just bruised, I think.”

 

Jazz worries her lip. “I trust you,” she begins, “but we both know your understanding of pain is kind of—” At length, she makes a so-so gesture with her free hand. “Skewed. Is it okay if I look at it before we wrap?”

 

“S’fine,” Danny replies dully, and Jack doesn’t know if it is meant in protest or allowance. Dutifully, he watches as Jazz goes ahead with turning her brother around. He cringes instinctively at the sight of Danny’s back—painted with a mottled tapestry of sickly green and black bruising over the scars.

 

“Yikes,” Jazz says, as though this is only a mild inconvenience. “You need a sling to keep your shoulder still while it heals and help the muscles relax,” she declares.

 

Jack blinks dazedly. “Err—is there anything I can do to help?” He asks, feeling deeply out of place. His belly burns with nausea, and his tongue feels thick in his mouth. He’d suspected before that stray bruises came from Phantom-fights, but it had never before crossed his mind that his little boy was getting  _ really _ hurt.  

Danny swivels his head almost too far around to look at Jack, expression unreadable. “It’s okay,” he says. His eyes are shadowed and half-lidded, exhausted even through the discomfort and pain. “Think—” he sighs, pausing as Jazz wraps a long triangular bandage under his arm and around his neck.  “Try’n relax. We’re gonna have to talk after this,” Danny announces dejectedly. “Real serious talk.” 

 

“I guess so,” agrees Jack mildly, “but don’t push yourself into a discussion if you’re still so hurt and tired. You’ve been through a lot lately—” he allows his gaze to fall on Vlad, snoring softly on the couch. “I think we all have. It’s okay to just rest.”

 

“No,” Danny replies, a little bit snappishly as Jazz sterilizes a oozing black cut just below his left pectoral. He hisses very softly as she presses alcohol against the gash, wiping away a thin crust of strange brown-green discharge. “Not talking about shit,” he explains shortly, “is what got us into this mess in the first place.” Danny turns back around, wincing as his injuries are stretched. “Does it need stitches?” He asks his sister.

 

She shakes her head. “I think it’s fine if we just clean and wrap it for now—but Dad is right.” Jazz pins Danny with a hard, almost matronly glare. “I know I can’t stop you from having this talk,” she admits, “and I don’t think I should: it’s something we need to get out in the open—but you’re even dumber than usual if you think you’re not getting bedrest for at  _ least _ two weeks.”

 

“I heal faster than that,” Danny protests, looking a little bit sly. “Besides, my arm’s broken, not my mouth. We can still get this over with even while I’m hurt.” His expression drops, however, at his next request. “Would you check the Ecto-filtrator, though?”

 

Jack can’t help but stiffen at that. He doesn’t know if it’s actually gotten colder in the room or it’s just the bleak feeling down his spine playing tricks.  

 

“You’ve already had two cartridges worth,” Jazz scolds, expertly masking her discomfort with vaguely parental fretting, “plus whatever you got at Tucker’s house.”

 

“I know,” mumbles Danny, wilting. “But it’ll help me heal, and it feels good.”

 

Jazz sighs, tucking a sweaty clump of hair behind her brother’s tapered ear—something Jack has only just now noticed properly—and feeling his forehead with the back of her hand. “Fine,” she concedes, albeit reluctantly. “You’re running a little warm, so just enough to get your temperature to settle. No more than that, though: don’t want to overdo it.”

 

“You can do that?” Jack blurts out, unable to restrain his curiosity. “I mean, I figure there was a reason you don’t just have lots of the stuff all the time to avoid running out of steam and—uh, stuff.”   

 

Danny pulls his lips back strangely. Jack thinks he might be smiling, but it seems more like a grimace, all tense and curled. “Yeah,” he confirms dully. “There is—at least with the lab stuff.” The halfa shrugs noncommittally, explaining, “We’re not sure if it’s something to do with the refined version like in the filtrator, or just a general thing, but it makes me sick if I have too much.”

 

“I see,” says Jack, nodding. It makes sense, he supposes: it operates like medication: appropriate dosages will keep him healthy, but an overdose may be just as harmful as the symptoms it prevents.

 

He waits a moment longer as Jazz finishes cleaning and bandaging her brother’s relevant injuries. The silence hangs thick and pregnant in the air, broken only by Vlad’s soft snoring and the little noises of Jazz’s first-aid routine. Jack can’t help but fidget, looking away and feeling a little stupid for thinking Danny might be willing to share more of something he is so clearly uncomfortable with.

 

Jazz stands and pats Danny, messing up his hair into disorganized spikes that stand on end of their own accord. He makes a little snort of displeasure at that, but hums a low thrumming note of affection when she kisses him on the head. She disappears down the basement stairs, and Jack watches in guilty fascination as Danny cocks his head at her, subtly alert in a way that is teetering on the edge of uncanny, just enough to be  _ off _ . Jack stops watching, turning his attention very deliberately to Vlad.

 

Danny notices.

 

“Sorry,” he apologizes. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

 

“You didn’t,” Jack asserts, lamely.

 

The boy throws him a deadpan look that is delightfully, refreshingly adolescent, one brow raised and the other crimped low in cynical disbelief. “I can tell I made you nervous, Dad. It’s written all over your face, and you sound like the drumline from one of those shitty dance songs Tuck likes.”

 

Jack blinks dumbly at Danny. “You can hear my heartbeat—how’s that? I mean… you know, it doesn’t really make sense—”

 

“Being dead doesn’t just give you super senses,” Danny says, parroting as though he’s heard it before. “I got you. We—Sam and Tuck and Jazz and I—aren’t really sure about the details, to be honest, but we figure it’s got to do with the fact that being properly alive takes extra energy, and since I’m not it goes into my senses and my muscles and shit instead.”

 

“That seems right,” he agrees. “Especially with you and Vladdie’s— erm, unique situation. Base required functions are reduced,” he muses, nodding to himself, “Yeah, and all running on electrical currents instead of nutrients… So the extra resources and modified chromosomes get dedicated to enhancing instead of maintaining them—cool.”

 

Danny gives Jack a look like he’s just sprouted another head, a look he recognizes as a universal ‘does not compute’ sort of expression. It’s one he’s been on the receiving end of quite a lot in his career, so he just laughs it off as Danny says, “Huh.”

 

“How, though—” Jack shrugs helplessly, “How do you manage it?”

 

“Whatcha mean?” 

 

“Well,” he says, unsure how to begin. “I guess I don’t have super-senses and I still get overwhelmed by stuff. I can’t imagine dealing with that amplified. Are you okay?”

 

Danny laughs a little. “Yeah,” he agrees. “It’s a lot sometimes, but I’ve had time to get used to it, so I’m fine. It’s not selective, apparently, not like tuning a radio signal like superheroes do in movies, but I’ve gotten a lot better at focusing with it. Y’don’t need to worry,” he assures firmly. 

 

Jack nods, getting down to sit cross-legged on the floor. He pats his knee, and Danny flops back to rest his head in his lap. “You’re such good, smart kids, you and your sister and your friends” he praises, but his throat tightens with regret as he cards his fingers through Danny’s hair. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

 

“You were,” Danny says firmly, brows pinched close and worried. “In your way. You did your best.”

 

He blinks. “What makes you think that?” Asks Jack, putting his arms over Danny’s chest. The teen reaches over with his own good hand to press his curled fingers into Jack’s meaty palm, stroking it soothingly with his thumb.

 

“You’re not subtle, Dad.” He laughs. “I love you, but you’re not. We’re a family of ghost hunters, and I’m a ghost. There’s only so many ways a conversation starting with the question can go.” Danny shrugs. “But you still did what you could. Kinda like Jazz, actually.” At Jack’s questioning look he elaborates: “She knew for a long time before I told her for real—saw me change totally by accident. She just covered me until I was ready. Helped with little things, y’know?”

 

Jack can’t help but relax a bit at that, squeezing Danny’s cool hand. “I thought she was acting funny because of the college applications.” He chuckles, a little feebly. “Think I helped like that?”

 

“Yes,” says Danny, “I do. I could tell you were nervous, hidin’ something. And I know even better that your aim ain’t that shitty, Dad. Awful convenient for me, your mistakes were.” He grins, not a half-smile or a solemn smirk, but a real, beaming grin up at Jack. “Thank you.”

 

They sit in amicable silence for a long while. Jazz can be heard rummaging around in the basement, a small orchestra of clinking vials and scraping metal wafting up into the living room. Vlad snores softly, and a cardinal whistles from the tree outside. The boiler rattles somewhere downstairs, the way it always does in the fall and winter, and the natural sounds of the settling house fill up the quiet with little reminders of life. Jack looks at Danny and feels very lucky in this moment to be here with his son, tired and hurt, but ultimately safe. He thinks that everything will be okay.

 

It is only a few moments more before Jazz trudges up the stairs, a little bit frazzled, but satisfied. “The filtrator isn’t full yet,” she explains, but thrusts out an Erlenmeyer flask, smudged with fingerprints and filled almost halfway with swirling green ectoplasm. “But I found this leftover from some experiment. Should be fine to drink, just a reaction to temperature and humidity according to Mom’s records.”

 

Danny nods and sits up, taking the flask and cupping it gratefully between his hands. He leans a bit away from Vlad even at some distance, almost defensive, and sniffs at the gooey ectoplasm, wrinkling his nose. “Yikes,” he says feebly, and holds the container out for Jack to see its contents, separated into almost-transparent tinted liquid, watery and thin at the top, and deep black-green clumps of gelatinous  _ stuff _ that spreads and forms a strange film over the top of the bottle.

 

Jack can’t help but follow Danny in throwing Jazz a look. “Don’t yikes me, Danny, it’s all I can find down there— and Dad, don’t let him con you. It’ll be fine if you just mix it up, even better if you chill it, too. Depends on how bad you need it, little bro.”

 

The halfa curls his lip at his sister, grumbling, but defiantly puts the flask to his mouth and chugs almost all of the thin liquid—he chokes, screwing his eyes shut and crimping his lips into a strange, pained expression. “S’like vinegar,” he hisses, shuddering involuntarily.

 

“Sorry,” says Jazz, only marginally apologetic. “What you get for being impulsive. Try the chunky part.”

 

Danny obeys with little hesitation, sticking a finger down the neck of the flask and scooping out a gummy piece of ectoplasm. He pokes his tongue out and licks it tentatively, then grins wide and eager. “We could make candy!” Danny exclaims, and slurps another piece out.

 

Jack laughs despite himself. Stupid siblings’ antics make this entire ordeal almost fade into normalcy, cushioning the blow with some hard-wired familiarity. It makes him feel safe, watching his son try and stretch his tongue to the bottom of a flask for sweet green ghost Jello while his sister smiles smugly and crosses her arms. 

 

“I’ll write a recipe for ecto-fudge if you guys let me,” he offers, and Danny’s face lights up like a little kid at Christmas. He blinks rapidly up at Jack, even tearing himself away from the flask in his hands.

 

“You don’t have to do that,” he begins to say, but Jack cuts him off.

 

“You deserve it.” He looks Jazz hard in the eye, then Danny. “I’m proud of you kids, both of you.”

 

Danny’s vaguely tense expression softens, and he smiles blindingly at Jack. “Thank you,” he says in earnest. “It means a lot.” His gaze drifts from his father to Vlad’s prone form on the sofa, and he clears his throat a little awkwardly. “Should we wake him and wrap him up?”

 

Jack only feels confident shrugging, so father and son turn their attention in tandem to Jazz. “It’s inevitable that we  _ will _ have to,” she admits. “But so long as he doesn’t do anything strenuous waiting should be alright. He’s going to need his shoulder done over, but it’s probably okay to just let him rest for now.” She leans over the arm of the couch to examine the makeshift bindings around his chest. “I wish I’d gotten to grab the kit out of the GAV when it first happened,” Jazz scolds herself, “that would be better. Using his powers when he was hurt really did a number on him, but it doesn’t look like he’s still bleeding—the sweater is holding. Let him sleep.” 

 

Jack nods, and Danny hums low in agreement, brows furrowed into an anxious frown above shuttered blue-green eyes. “Sorry,” the boy says, winding the drawstring of his sweatpants absentmindedly between his fingers. “Jazz, mind helping me get dressed? I feel naked.”

 

“I’ll do it,” Jack interrupts without hesitation, amending, “You’ve done more than enough, Jazzy. You need to relax, too.”

 

“Are you sure?” She asks, frowning. Jack knows that she isn’t confident in his ability to help, not for lack of trust but some vaguely clinical concern for his mental wellbeing. She sees the way he looks at Danny’s scars and fears that he’s not emotionally equipped to handle seeing them up close, touching them, verifying their realness—even through the simple act of helping a splinted arm through a sleeve.

 

“Yes,” he says anyway, and without missing a beat turns to Danny. “Is it okay if I grab something of mine? You’ve grown into your tees and I think you should let those injuries breathe a little bit.”

 

Danny shrugs. “I don’t think it’ll make muchuva difference,” he admits, “but go for it. Just need something clean and comfy.”

 

“Alright,” Jack hums. He trudges upstairs, turning into the dim hallway. The bulb halfway down is burnt out, he notices, but soft light seeps from the door to Danny’s room, faintly blue and foggy from through the window. 

 

Despite himself, he puts a hand on the doorknob, almost recoiling from its frigidity. The room is as innocuous as it ever was: glow-in-the-dark star stickers dot the ceiling, growing more and more faded after years of use but abstinent on never going out. The comforter on Danny’s bed is blue and patterned with planets, rumpled towards the bottom of the bed as he’d left it upon waking. NASA posters and cutouts from science magazines are pinned to a corkboard above Danny’s little desk, where an old desktop computer fan hums idly.

 

It smells like citrus and deodorant covering faint teenage musk despite the supernatural chill. Like Danny.

 

Jazz’s room is neat and pastel-colored the next door down. She has a rickety bookshelf that Danny and Jack had worked to make together for a woodworking class. Maddie had helped her paint it, Jack remembers, years ago. It is stacked miraculously tall with volumes on psychology and mythology. A slim laptop and a ring-bound scrapbook are laid atop each other on the nightstand. Her bed is made up all straight and clean, and the curtains are drawn to cast only a white sliver of light across the floor.

 

He misses the simple times that stare at him from within his children’s rooms. 

 

The window is open in the room he shares with Maddie, where she climbed out. Cool air blows in, batting at the curtains. Jack shuts it and picks out a sweatshirt for Danny, and then goes back downstairs.

 

Danny hums his appreciation as Jack helps him pull his arm out of the sling. He holds the foam splint carefully, cradling Danny’s forearm as he helps it into the sleeve of the sweatshirt. It’s a red University of Wisconsin fleece with a plainly stylized logotype across the chest. Danny has gotten much bigger in recent months, but he’s still nowhere near as huge as Jack is, and the borrowed sweater goes to halfway down his thighs.

 

“Thank you,” Danny says, gaze downcast as he fiddles with the sleeves. “It’s cozy.”

 

Jack nods. “No problem, buddy.” Dutifully, he lifts the boy’s bad arm back into the sling, now on top of the sweatshirt. He can’t help but smile as Danny sinks comfortably into the fleece, humming contentedly low in his throat, leaning into the touch as Jack ruffles his hair. 

 

He can feel Jazz watching them—approvingly, he hopes. 

 

“You said you don’t know where she is,” Jazz observes. Jack turns around to see her gnawing pensively at her nails, brows furrowed in thought. Her gaze flicks up to meet his as she elaborates, “Mom.”

 

He shakes his head. “I did. I don’t. The window was still open when I went upstairs—she snuck out to look for Danny, prolly not long before dawn, I think. Must still be out in town. She was in a real panic.”

 

“That means we still have time,” Jazz muses. Her emerald gaze flicks up to the window behind Jack, and he follows her gaze, twisting in place. The sky is grey and cloudy, but he can see the sun beating down hot and white through the vapor, spitting narrow, spotty beams down onto the city. “Not much.”

 

“What do we—” Danny begins, but cuts himself off. His eyes are wide and his posture hunched, trembling in vaguely feral alertness as he tips his head in that eerie way that animals do towards the door. “Listen.”

 

There is a noise that Jack wouldn’t have noticed or cared for coming from near the front of the house, a faint  _ scritch-scritch _ ing that drifts in from under the door. It starts off in slow sets of two, but as Vlad and the Fentons collectively sit in frozen rapture the scratching grows in intensity, becoming quicker and more forceful. Danny stands abruptly, lurching towards the door. Blue mist seeps from his mouth and spirals around his raven head like a halo, catching on his ears and cowlicks before disappearing into the air. He opens it without thought, then gasps—not in fear but delight—at the one on the other side.

 

“Cujo!” He cries, trilling affectionately as the ghost puppy jumps and paws at his lower leg. His voice almost breaks as he asks, “What are you doing here?”

 

The dog pants, dripping green tongue lolling from its mouth as it trots into the house, circling Danny’s feet and pinching his shoelaces between its teeth. It tugs and yips, a line of pale brindled fur standing on end down its back, tail flagging stiffly behind it. “Oh no,” says Danny, and the dog whimpers in anxious bursts up at him. It bunches its legs and eagerly climbs into the boy’s grasp, tucking its small frame into the crook of his good arm. The dog leans across his belly to lick at Danny’s splint with curious concern, then presses itself closer against his side.

 

“What did he say?” Jazz asks breathlessly, and even though he’s confused Jack can sense the desperate fear in her voice. Sweat beads on her brow and her gaze wavers between her brother and the door slightly ajar behind him.

 

“She’s coming,” hisses Danny, teeth bared. His hands shake even as he clutches the puppy in his arms, shoulders pulled defensively up against his splayed ears. Jack thinks he looks like a cornered animal, bristling up even as he shakes like a dry leaf in a hurricane. “What d’I do?” He tosses his head, gaze darting wildly about the living room. Jack watches his eyes become unfocused, and as his breaths grow fast and shallow greenish foam collects at the corners of his mouth.

 

Jazz says his name and Danny flinches, making a low rattly sound in his throat that devolves into a wet sob. He balances Cujo between his good and bad arms, burying his scrunched nose into the undead canine’s bleached celadon coat as Jazz collects him into her arms.

 

“I won’t let her hurt you,” she says firmly, throwing a look to Jack over Danny’s shoulder. “None of us will.”

 

He shakes his head feebly into Jazz’s neck, whimpering. “I know, I just—but maybe—” His fingers curl like claws into his sister’s clothes, scraping against her unprotected skin with enough force to make her twitch.

 

“Don’t say it,” Jazz orders warningly, even as she touches his face and brushes tears away.

 

Danny makes a strangled noise that barely passes as human, something sticky and harsh rolling up from his chest in a sobbing sort of bark. “Stop,” he snarls, wrenching himself from Jazz. Cujo leaps from his arms with a whimper, disappearing someplace under the table as the halfa finally explodes, “I hurt her and I hurt Vlad!” His eyes are blazing with hurt and fury, and fizzing green sparks prickle their way down his neck. “You love me,” says Danny, helplessly, but it takes little time for him to raise his voice once more. “And I’ll never stop being grateful for that—but… it’s worth considering that Mom is right!”

 

“Why would you think that—what the fuck,” Jazz spits, aghast, and Vlad sputters, floundering for words. “You take that back right this instant!”

 

“No!” He roars, shaking his head violently. “It’s beyond thinking, Jazz—I’m dangerous! That’s just a fact and you know it! I proved it in the basement yesterday—”

 

“You had no control!” Vlad defends, despite turning his injured shoulder away from the fighting. “You’re no more dangerous than—” 

 

Cutting him off, Jazz all but sobs, “Stop!”

 

“And I promise you I’ll prove it again!”

 

“That’s just not true!”

 

“You fucking  _ idiot _ !”

 

Danny’s eyes are the color of blood and Jazz is fuming with fists clenched at her sides, each seconds away from being at the other’s throat while Vlad shakes with something between fear and rage. Jack has seen plenty.

 

“That’s  _ enough _ !” He bellows, loudly enough to make Cujo cry softly in the chaos—and steps between his children. Danny wilts against the volume, suddenly seeming meek as the embers fade from his eyes, but Jazz only shakes her head, blinking tears from her own.

 

“I can’t believe you value yourself so little,” she chokes.

 

Jack puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes gently, this time more softly insisting that “you’ve had enough, Jazzy, the both of you.” He turns to Danny, fixing him with a stern gaze. “We have enough to deal with just having the situation with your mother. Let’s not add more infighting to the mix.”

 

Jazz gapes at him, blinking tears from her eyes. “But—” she begins, however is promptly cut off.

 

“Your father is right, Jasmine.” With monumental effort Vlad props himself up on the arm of the couch, swaying as he does so. His cobalt gaze is a bit dull and clouded with weariness, but steely. “And you, Daniel—Danny, rather—are being needlessly pessimistic.” 

 

“This is another talk we need to have, but not now. Like I said,” Jack sighs, returning Vlad’s approving nod. “We have more than enough on our plates already.”

 

“Fine,” Jazz mutters, staring forlornly over Jack’s shoulder to look at Danny, who staunchly refuses eye contact. 

 

He wets his grey lips nervously, holding his bad arm especially close to his body. “She’s still coming,” announces Danny, voice wavering. “And I can’t—I don’t know what to do.”

 

If Danny hides, Maddie will inevitably find him, and won’t rest until she does. If he runs, she’ll see that as evidence of guilt and chase him down until he is dead, or worse. Jack stares, drawing his gaze from Vlad to Danny to Jazz. “You don’t need to,” he finally says, beckoning for his son to come over. Cautiously, he does, and Jack helps him to sit against the couch as his legs go limp beneath him.

 

In the back of his mind, Jack wonders if this is how he looked back in the GAV, eyes wide and darting, face gone ashen and slick with sweat, a stream of unintelligible whimpers seeping from his lips. He takes Danny’s little shaking hands into his own, rubbing his thumbs soothingly over the boy’s bony knuckles. 

 

“Pipe down, buddy—that’s good,” hums Jack, and Danny turns his aimless gaze instead to focus on their hands slotted in his lap. “You don’t need to do this by yourself,” Jack promises. “We’re here with you.” 

 

Danny blinks rapidly, uncomprehending and lit with reptile fear. “I know,” he all but whispers. “But I don’t feel safe.”

 

Jack can feel something sink into a pit in his belly at that. “Baby boy,” he breathes, a gentle, half-hearted rebuke. Danny’s scruffy hair is buzzed close and prickly beneath his fingers where he cradles the back of his head against his chest. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s gonna be okay, starkid.”

 

That strikes a chord, and Danny bites back a sob, cool breath puffing against Jack’s clothes; he hasn’t been called that in maybe a solid decade. A nickname from simpler times, muses Jack, and in a blink little Danny had been too big a boy for silly things like that. He was in the first grade, after all. Tears smear his vision into a watercolor bleed, so Jack just buries his nose in his son’s hair. He smells like some piney shampoo that they don’t keep in the house, and sweat, and a faint acidic tang of ectoplasm that puts Jack’s hindbrain in the lab downstairs. 

 

Danny’s shoulders shake weakly as he cries, and Jack can feel his muscles all but vibrate with anxious tension against his hands.

 

“Nobody’s gonna hurt you, buddy. I’ll do anything to make sure of that, I promise.”

 

Danny looks up at his father, eyes wide and glistening with tears. If he squints just right Jack can see a pudgy toddler face in his teenage son’s freshly angular features, cheeks rosy in his mind with lively flush as that tiny little boy babbles about stars and space aliens. In his mind’s eye Jack sees Danny crying, dribbling snot and wailing as he clutches his leg, knee skinned down to the bone after a nasty fall.

 

Maddie had taken him to the hospital that day, he remembers. She’d been afraid something was broken, and guilty that she hadn’t paid enough attention to allow him to get hurt. They’d gone out for ice cream afterwards.

 

Jazz’s hands wrap around them as far as she can reach and she whispers an apology against the back of Danny’s ear. Her voice sounds small and broken and tender in such a way that it makes Jack’s heart hurt. Simple forgiveness, kindness despite her frustration—he doesn’t know where she got it, certainly not from his dense oblivity. Once he thought that sensitivity was Maddie’s, but now he is not so sure, because their child is cowering and weeping in fear of his own mother.

 

It kills Jack to know that. He shows his tangled feelings in the only way he can, rubbing circles in Danny’s back and humming into his hair until the boy finally pulls away. Panting, he lowers his head, putting pressure on his temples and closing his eyes.

 

“Okay,” says Danny. He sounds drained, emotions spent and replaced with exhaustion. “I’m okay.”

 

Jack nods, agreeing, “you are,” at the same time Jazz assures “it’s okay.” They have come to the same conclusion, he thinks, because when they make eye contact a spark passes between them, an unspoken declaration that Danny comes first. Even against Maddie, a mother and a wife and a friend, because he is real. Not human in his entirety, but no less a son and a brother and a  _ hero _ .  

 

Even Vlad seems to understand from his place sitting in silence behind them, because as soon as the moment passes he begins, “Maddie will not be willing to hear him out.” He seems mildly hesitant, but there is steel in his words. “And,” Vlad continues, “I’m not sure about you two or myself, either.” We need something to convince her, irrefutably, of Danny’s humanity.”

 

Jazz only offers him a pensive look, gaze flicking between Vlad and her brother. “How?”

 

“That isn’t possible,” the younger halfa says curtly. “And even if we could prove something that isn’t true…” He sighs, wiping grit from his weary eyes. “Right now she’s scared and it’s making her crazy. She’s gonna believe what she wants to believe, no matter what.”

 

Jazz scoffs. “So what do we do, Danny?” Her voice is softer than before, but her desperate frustration is more than apparent. “Just let her tear you apart?”

 

“No,” says Danny, a bit affronted at the suggestion. He shrugs helplessly, but offers an alternative. “We could like, knock her out or something. Settle her so that when she wakes up we can convince her it’s all a dream?” His voice climbs as he speaks until he sounds almost prepubescent.

 

“That only works in films, Daniel.”

 

Danny winds up for a snippy retort, but falters when his gaze lands on Vlad’s bound wounds. “We should rebandage that since you’re awake.”

 

Vlad narrows his eyes, frowning deeply. “I’m quite fine, Danny. You’re the one I’m worried about.”

 

“Please,” the boy insists, a little more forcefully now—but then his voice slips into a whisper, ”Don’t worry about me,” he orders, full of venom, “just don’t.”

 

Vlad scoffs a little, disbelieving. “Fine. I don’t forgive you.” Danny’s eyes blow wide as dinner plates, flickering from within with bright green sparks. “Because there’s nothing to forgive. You weren’t in control.”

 

Silence swells and weighs the air with a bitter sort of comfort. “I don’t deserve it,” says Danny, finally.

 

“It’s not your call to make,” Vlad replies. His voice shakes. Sweat beads on his forehead and his face turns pale when he looks at Danny. He looks him in the eye anyway. “I didn’t forgive your parents when I had the chance. I  _ am _ going to forgive you.”

 

A mute shrug is his only reply. Danny tucks his bad arm close to his body and trudges across the living room, right up to the front door. 

 

He opens it.

 

He steps outside.

 

He waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy crap sorry this took so long @~@


	9. IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: violence, language, discussion of mental illness

She finally finds the ghost at almost noon, standing in front of her own goddamned house. It wears her son’s disquieted face; his blue eyes, his brown skin, his unruly black hair—all viciously purloined by some nebulous, insidious imposter. She trots across the street, wary, fingers tight around the gun at her hip. It waits there and it mocks her with brows pulled into a frown.

 

“Mom,” it calls from across the sidewalk. Maddie stops at the curb.

 

The sun is beating hard in the peacock sky, hot rays of midday light glaring down onto the pavement. The broad disk of the noontime sun forms a blinding white halo around Not-Danny’s glossy head, casting harsh shadows in hollows of his eyes. It speaks to her again and it sounds just like her baby boy, low alto and rough but kind.

 

It isn’t real.

 

She remembers the way the monster’s banshee screeching had ricocheted in the Wisconsin lab. The noise was Danny’s voice, for sure, but it was twisted and warped beyond recognition, layered and shrill. That bellow had turned into an eerily human scream; a harrowing, gut-wrenching, bone-chilling sound that makes her head throb even at the memory, filling her breast with a paroxysm of dread.

 

“Please talk to me.” It sounds almost pleading. The ghost-dog is pressed against its Casper High sweatpants, wide russet eyes peering from behind the impostor’s leg. Traitor. Maddie almost growls aloud, choking the noise to silence in her throat. “I can’t run anymore. I won’t fight you.”

 

One arm is tucked into a sling across its chest. It appears, for simple lack of a better descriptor, frail. Some bone-deep lassitude seeps through its slouched posture, fogging its hooded eyes. The softness of its trembling, stolen voice almost convinces Maddie, but she knows better. Her treacherous hands shake and she almost fumbles the gun, but she manages to rein in her disquiet with a simple reminder:

 

It isn’t real.

 

A memory of the incident rushes, unbidden, to the forefront of her brain. The iron reek of blood had filled her nose, hot and nauseating. Her vision swam but through the blur she had seen Hell. Maddie will never become inured to that odious, despicable  _ thing _ that destroyed her life that night. The Wisconsin ghost was gone and Vlad was pinned between Danny’s knees. She hadn’t realized at first, what was happening, but then her friend screamed.

 

And the thing she knows couldn’t possibly have been her son only  _ growled _ at him, like an animal. Maddie doesn’t remember when she began to weep then, but the creature must have noticed at some point her revulsed clamor because it swiveled its head almost too far around to bare its teeth at her. She still sees its face,  _ Danny’s  _ face, seared into her retinas like a brand. Thick cherry blood dribbled down its chin, stained its jagged eggshell teeth and the pallid flesh of its mouth, and its  _ eyes _ —they had stared emptily into her like nacreous green marbles, clouded and glowing with some abhorrent animal glee that made her skin crawl with the feet of a thousand scorpions. It licked the blood from its lips with a too-long tongue and tore back into Vlad with mouth and nail.

 

If she puts the barrel of her pistol against its head, she wonders, will this disgusting,  _ evil _ thing disappear again? Will it relinquish its hold on Danny’s worldly body, or will the malformed spirit just whisk that away, too? Her trigger finger itches, hungry to know. To avenge him. If she fires, she wonders, will it be expelled? Will ectoplasm explode from nowhere through the side of Danny’s head, hissing on the ground as he returns to himself? The fantasy flashes behind her eyes of tearful hugs and heroism, pride burning in her chest. She’ll have saved him, then.

 

The ghost steps unsteadily towards her, wobbling on its feet. “Come inside. Come home.” It reaches up with its good arm, clutching the fabric of its stolen sweatshirt over where its body’s heart would be. “Please.”

 

“Don’t talk to me like you have any right to my respect,” she snaps, and the creature wearing Danny’s skin flinches violently away. Maddie waves the pistol and aims it straight at the ghost’s face, edging closer as she does. She stares down the quivering barrel of the gun and curses her weakness, but Maddie persists. “I know what you are. What you’re doing.” Her limbs falter and burn with exhaustion, but she trudges closer, edging on with her weapon outstretched. Aquamarine eyes go wide, glistening with what must be a wet sheen of tears.

 

They can’t be real.

 

She will never forget Vlad’s garbled screams; the way his blood splattered on the wall from the force with which the monster ripped his flesh from his body, how greedily it had shoveled the pieces into its mouth, unhinging its jaw and savagely snapping down still-bleeding morsels in its frenzy.  

 

“Mom,” it says again. That stolen voice breaks, crackling pitifully in Danny’s throat. “I love you. I hate this.” Rage bubbles in Maddie’s chest and bile smolders in the back of her throat. Her hands shake. It steps closer, and the ghost-dog at its heels turns and cowers, darting into Fentonworks through the still-ajar front door. “I hated lying. To Dad and Lancer and the therapist—most’f all to you.”

 

She squeezes the trigger. Maddie goes deaf in that moment but is acutely aware of the jolt in her wrist, the way the butt of the gun pokes into her palm as it recoils. She blinks and the ghost stumbles, crying out. Someone shouts from within the house, but it sounds like she’s listening through water.

 

Black blood oozes tarrishly from a hole in Not-Danny’s stomach, just below and to the left of the sternum. It makes her ill to damage her son’s body, but that is only proof of how far gone he must be. It is a price she is willing to pay if it means ejecting the Phantom from its stolen vessel. She’d meant to aim for the head in the hopes of expelling the ghost in a single shot, but her vigorously quaking hands have betrayed her, it seems—and undeniably for the better. The ghost-thing coughs wetly, and more dark liquid bursts from its borrowed mouth.

 

Jazz is there to catch it when it falls. Maddie gapes, unable to suppress the blade of shock that surprises her chest. Jazz presses her hand to the monster’s bubbling wound with a cry of “Danny!” and throws a fraught look to her mother—a desperate, horrified stare that Maddie simply cannot comprehend, not at first. Jazz lowers Danny’s body to the ground, seemingly unaware of the vile thing hiding inside it. Betrayal, she realizes. Jazz looks at her like she’s participated in some great and terrible perfidy—but she doesn’t understand! Maddie’s heart is lodged in her throat. She lets the gun fall slack in one hand against her thigh, rushing forward.

 

Jack, of all people, puts himself in her way. He looks like he’s trying his damnedest to appear stern despite being about to cry at any moment now.

 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, voice warbling as he puts his hands on her shoulders. “It’s safe.” At Maddie’s shove and uncomprehending stare he pushes back, overpowering her exhausted body with only moderate effort and putting more distance between them and the house—and consequently the front lot of sidewalk where Not-Danny is curled in Jazz’s lap, mumbling things that Maddie cannot hear.

 

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand.” Her voice breaks, colored with an almost vicious, dolorous  _ fear _ that makes Jack flinch, blinking wetness from his eyes. “That’s not really Danny!” He opens his mouth to retort, but she continues over him. “You said I didn’t have to talk about it but I should’ve—you deserve to know.”

  
“You still—”

 

“No!” Maddie struggles weakly in her husband’s grip, but she’s wearing thin, strength flagging when it matters most. She shoves against him and cries, cursing her treacherous body as it weakens beneath her.

 

He says her name very quietly, a strangely cognizant type of hurt quavering in his tone. Dread curls in her belly. “Please,” Jack hums. “Just relax. We can talk about this, okay?”

 

“No,” she repeats, fatigue thickening her voice. Her head begins to loll and she sees the ghost-dog staring up at her from between Jack’s feet. The rowan pools of its eyes bore into her, accusing. Something in that look it gives her makes her blood boil, and her face burns. Maddie snaps her head up hard enough to crack against her husband’s chin, and he lets go of her arm with a strangled cry. A flash of moldy mink fur passes through her periphery, the pattering of little paws on cement seeming like thunder to her throbbing head. She staggers, making to skirt him, to get to Jazz, but something gets in her way before she can cover any ground.

 

The ghost-dog  _ roars _ .

 

Jazz and Jack both whirl to face it, two sets of eyes wide as its body bubbles. The monster is even bigger than it was before. Its muscles grow and swell just as last time, stretching its thin grey skin to bare patches of hairless flesh, spinal ridge jutting out farther and farther between its tumefied shoulders until it’s just a line of bone-white spines down the monster’s back. Deep pectorals burst and swell, dorsal muscle throbbing and twitching with wicked, unnatural strength. Its head splits and bones grind together as it steps over Not-Danny, putting its huge, gaping maw between Maddie and the house.

 

Maddie swallows the urge to retch. She might as well be a fly to this beast, with all its writhing, pulsating flesh that humps its back and makes it spasm erratically. Its wicked tusk-like teeth must be as long as her forearm, dripping icy green slobber onto the pavement.

 

She raises her gun and it howls at her. The thing is at least a head taller than Jack at the shoulder alone, and if her shots were paint pellets before they’re barely raindrops now, rolling off of its leathery hide like nothing at all. Maddie turns the barrel on Not-Danny where it is curled on the ground between those massive, taloned paws instead, struggling to keep her aim steady enough to go clean enough through the head.

 

The ghost-dog, the  _ hellhound _ that it is, rushes her and throws its bulk between them. She hears Jazz scream, “Don’t hurt her!” and a choking sound from Jack, but the monster pounces without missing a beat, pinning her hard against the concrete with its forelimbs. She can see deep ruts being carved into the pavement beside her head, feels bones creaking in her arms where the ghost-dog holds her down with too much weight. Its slavering maw is open above her face, freezing clumps of gooey saliva dripping from between its monstrous yellow fangs. Maddie can’t help but flinch when one strikes her above the eye, chilling and sticky as it drips down against her temple.

 

She thrashes as best she can, but her efforts are in vain; she is too weak and exhausted from hunting all night for Danny and his captor, and bruises already bloom on her arms and spine from where she hit the ground, stinging with dirt and pebbles that poke through her torn clothes. Something wet seeps from her left shoulder blade, she thinks, and it tugs uncomfortably at her skin when she tries to move. It smells like iron.

 

Growling, the hellhound winds up, ready to take a bite, jaw all but unhinging even as Jack and Jazz cry out. Maddie thinks she can see motion from the corner of her eye where they pound at its heavily muscled flank, but it pays them no mind at all: single-mindedly focused on its prey.

 

But it stops.

 

“Down,” says a voice. It’s wet and raspy and tinged with hurt, but undeniably Danny’s. Low alto. High tenor, maybe. Almost pleasant despite its hoarseness—or it would be if she hadn’t known better. It’s the fake, Maddie knows.

 

“Get little, Cujo.” The monster dog obeys with a gurgling snort. Maddie gasps in relief as its bulk weighing on her body disappears, replaced by the only moderately irritating spots where small paws press into her stomach. The doppelgänger of her son stands over her, sighing down with hooded eyes, sinuous arm crossed over its belly where her bullet passed through its abdomen. If she cranes her neck she can see the trail of dark blood from where it’s pooled in the pavement further down the sidewalk, still glistening and painting its faded red sweatshirt black around the wound.

 

It sways precariously where it stands, eyelids fluttering as it struggles to stay focused and upright. Quite possibly concussed—like Maddie must unavoidably be, if her throbbing head and bilious insides have anything to say on the matter. The ghost lurches forward, and Maddie feels the thudding vibration next to her head where its knees hit the pavement hard enough to skin.

 

Maddie struggles, wriggling back against the ground even as her bruised shoulder stings and a sudden bout of labrynthitis makes the world spin around her. She kicks violently at the empty air and jolts her hips against the ground. Trembling with effort, she bunches her legs beneath her in a vain attempt to stand, but only succeeds in rolling awkwardly to the side so that her back is to Not-Danny.

 

The ghost reaches out with its one unslung arm, spindly hand and inner wrist painted with congealing blood from the wound she inflicted. Maddie can feel the almost-touch prickling down her spine and tenses, hunching her shoulders in a vain attempt to defend herself. Before making contact, however, it withdraws its hand with a low huff—exasperation, she thinks at first, but then something icy and wet strikes the side of her neck and drips into her clavicle that makes her give pause.

 

“I’m sorry,” Danny’s voice says. “I know you’d never’ve wanted this, Mom.” It sucks in a ragged breath, seemingly to steel itself. “I didn’t either.” Not-Danny pauses, and she can hear something high-pitched and pathetic crackle in its throat as it waits for a reply. Maddie knows better than to play this game—the ghost should know that much by now, too, but it presses her further.

 

“Y’know,” it remarks, “I didn’t believe in ghosts till I  _ was _ one.” Her stomach lurches, heart lodged in her throat as he barks a harsh, almost manic laugh all but into her ear. Jazz sniffles somewhere above and behind her, farther away and perpendicular to the ghost. “But I thought—gosh, this is so stupid—I thought that maybe if I couldn’t be human, at least I could use this to help people.”

 

Maddie can’t escape the image burned into her eyelids of her son, grimacing bitterly, tears in his eyes; needing comfort and receiving none. “Some hero I turned out to be, eh, ‘ama?”  

 

Something about that self-deprecating, adolescent remark drains Maddie’s will to fight away. Danny  _ would _ say something like that, she thinks. Despite her best efforts, she can’t help but ask; “Are you really him?”

 

“Of c—yes, Mom. I promise: I’m Danny and I’m me.” He lets out a quaking sob that Maddie struggles not to answer in kind. “You’re hurt. Am I—Can I touch you?”

 

She nods mutely, shivering as a cold hand ghosts over her ribs, gently turning her over onto her back. “How?” she rasps. Maddie can see through the stained hole in his shirt that the bullet wound is already closed, marked only by a small, white lump of scar tissue as evidence of its presence. Humans can’t do that… but in the absence of terror-fueled adrenaline, she can see that Danny is far too solid and complex to be a ghost. “How?”

 

Danny sighs down onto her face, shuttered eyes unreadable as he looks away. “The Accident. In Freshman year.”

 

“You mean—?”

 

“Yes. More than the scrambles and the shakes and the scar.” He laughs, soft but steeped in a strangely adult sort of bitterness that Maddie has never heard before from him. “I got dead.”

 

Reluctantly, Maddie makes eye contact with… her son? He must be. His eyes are framed by deep grey bags, reddened and wet with tears that slide silently down his nose. His calloused fingers draw away from her body to entangle themselves with her own, gripping her hand like a lifeline—and she does to him the same despite the clammy corpse chill of his skin against hers.

 

His sluggish pulse pounds against her fingertips that squeeze his wrist.

 

“I don’t understand,” she confesses, shaking her head slowly. Her skull feels stuffed full of cotton, and this doesn’t make sense. Ghosts can interact with the human world, to a degree, but their forms are almost exclusively approximations—fluid, impressionistic things that only arbitrarily mimic the truth of the living. “You’re al—your heart is beating.” Imitative spirits can’t replicate the frayed skin where Danny always picks at his cuticles out of nervous habit, or the downy layer of adolescent stubble that lines his cheeks, or the acne scars on his inner forearm that make the vertices of an almost-perfect equilateral triangle. Those are there and Maddie remembers them. They  _ must _ be real.  

 

He nods slowly—cautiously, she realizes. “It is. I’m not human, though.” Her throat seems to seize up, and a tiny choked noise escapes her. “I’m not a ghost, either.”

 

Maddie sits up, painfully and with help, leaning heavily on Danny’s solid shoulder. Something warm and wet trickles down from her scapula—definitely blood, but only a little bit that tickles her back on its way. Her ribs throb in time with her erratic pulse. She looks Danny in the eye, noting the distinctly reddish glow from someplace within the hollow of his pupil—in any other circumstances, an indicator of possession… but his eyes are alert, if tainted by a filmy green sheen over his irises. 

 

It doesn’t make sense—but then again, nothing about this situation does.

 

He seems to acknowledge her scrutinizing gaze, and his face darkens almost imperceptibly, but he does not stop her. “I’m both, or neither,” Danny explains tersely, a cutting weariness coloring his voice. “Something in between and also entirely new. I don’t know how it works either.”

 

“But you’re him? My Danny?”

 

Danny’s gaze softens, and the corners of his mouth turn ever so slightly upwards in a solemn smile. “That’s me.”

 

Maddie tosses her head even as the world spins around her, brow wrinkled in thought. “But—in the lab, up at Vlad’s—”

 

He stands abruptly, interrupting, “You’re hurt. We can talk more once you’re patched up, Mom, but I don’t want you sitting out here on the ground any longer.” His tone, very nearly  _ angry _ , leaves no room for argument, and Maddie hasn’t the energy to protest his avoidance as he hooks his good arm around her and helps her wobble to her feet.

 

Maddie swears as her legs crumple beneath her, and Danny snarls an odd guttural noise that can’t possibly be from a human language, let alone English—a rattling, sibilant curse that makes the hair on her neck stand on end. She can’t help but flinch a little too violently when that cold hand wraps around her wrist, then promptly withdraws.

 

“Dad,” the Danny calls, a bit anxiously and Maddie can hear her husband’s heavy footsteps come near. Her vision is blurred but she can see the orange sleeve of his suit in her periphery as he reaches towards her. He scoops her boneless body up into his arms and she clings to him. She hadn’t realized before how much her hands are shaking, and she thinks now that she might be sick if her head doesn’t stop spinning.

 

Her eyelids feel so, so heavy.

 

* * *

Guilt knots tightly in Danny’s gut as he watches his father carry Maddie into the house. Jazz brushes past him to cup her brother’s face in her hands, eyes wide and worried as she all but interrogates him, peeling back the blood-crusted cotton of his sweatshirt to peer at the gunshot on his belly.

 

“You closed it up?” She asks, scolding. “We both know you’re too weak for stuff like this—you’ll hurt yourself!” Despite her admonishment, Jazz’s voice trembles, and tears glisten in her green eyes, clinging to the lashes as she blinks rapidly at Danny, who answers with a shrug.

 

“Sorry,” he tells her, and means it. “It was kind of reflex, but I don’t regret it.” His gaze darts to the drying pool of sticky black blood on the sidewalk in front of their house. It looks more like paint or oil than any sort of bodily fluid, but the sight of it; the dark prints made by the treads of his sneakers and the smeared handprints where he’d knelt beside Maddie, make him feel just a little bit ill. Despite the haze descending upon him, creeping into his mind like a fog, he finds the presence to say, “Bleeding much more would probably hurt more than the energy I spent on healing.”

 

Jazz nods, seeming to acknowledge what Danny distantly recognizes as some sort of out-of-body experience. As much as he hates the near-constant psychoanalysis and lecturing his sister offers in times of crisis, at least Jazz has words to articulate his state of mind, and for that he is secretly very thankful. He thinks she knows the word for what he’s doing presently. Right now he is floating out of his head—Danny probably does that enough to constitute a proper disorder at this point—and his head feels foggy and numb while he watches himself take his sister’s hand. 

 

Like a cutscene in a video game, he thinks. It makes it so Jazz can lead him into the house and he can feel mostly nothing but a little bit okay. The partially-healed wound on his stomach throbs when he moves, aching hotly beneath his shirt, but he bears it because he knows what’s going on and that it will pass as long as he stays calm and aware of his surroundings.

 

Cataloguing each of his senses keeps Danny that way. Jazz’s hair is rusty ginger and Maddie’s is copper and Dad’s is black like his own, salted with grey. The house smells like blood and antiseptic but also, fainter, some natural scent of  _ home _ and burnt food and perfume. Jazz’s hand is soft and the sweatshirt is too but tear tracks pull at his skin and his mouth is too dry. His chest hurts. Oops.

 

Jazz holds him for a second at the kitchen doorway and then he’s sat on the carpet next to the sofa again, and absently he notes that Vlad has gotten up but taken his blanket along, probably upstairs to tend to Maddie with Dad. Jazz helps him to remove his sweater so she can look at his wounds. If he were human his skin would rise with gooseflesh but the usual chill of shirtlessness means nothing when his internal temperature hovers so far below the room. 

 

He sits placidly while Jazz cleans his stomach, filthy with crusting blood, and checks his bad arm again to make sure he hasn’t strained it. Danny can feel his mouth moving to say “it’s fine,” but the words don’t feel quite like his own.

 

His abused trapezius twitches of its own accord when Jazz touches it, tense and sore and knotted up something fierce—enough to make Danny hiss through his teeth even in his detachment. She says something soothing that fails to reach his ears and helps him stand to settle on the now-empty couch, good arm pinned between his bruised ribs and the cushions while Jazz goes to fetch something from the kitchen.

 

Danny lies there and listens to the soft thunking of cabinets and the crinkling of plastic bags across the hall. Ears perked, he closes his eyes and tunes those noises out, focusing instead on the low thrum of his own heartbeat; sluggish but strong within his chest, working alongside the oceanic lapping of his core as it pushes unearthly energy all the way out to the tips of his fingers and his toes. 

 

Part of him understands why people would fear him, he supposes, but Maddie—not quite Mom—has done far more than that. He thinks she might just hate him, plain and simple. He’s not sure he wants to check, or if he’ll object if she does.

 

In and out and again; he tracks his shaky breaths, revels in the sensation of his lungs filling and pushing up his sternum and then deflating and carrying it back down. It makes him feel  _ alive _ . 

 

Not long ago Maddie almost called him that, but stopped herself. He can’t help but scoff at that, just a little—he may not be wholly carbon-based anymore, but really, Danny doesn’t think that has too much bearing on his status as a life form. He’s animate and emotional and even though they’re so different from those of other living things, he has needs that must be met in order to survive. Danny can’t claim to be any sort of evolutionary biologist, transdimensional or otherwise, but he is fairly sure that he meets at least the basic criteria required to be categorized as alive, even in the technically-not roundabout way that things like viruses are. He’s not yet tested his ability to reproduce, and at this stage in his life does not plan to. Or ever, for that matter.

 

The inanity of his current train of thought registers through the fog seeping into his brain and Danny chuckles a little, then growls as his shoulder twinges again. Jazz pokes her head out from the kitchen with a frown, looking uneasily over him.

 

“You okay, little brother?”

 

He turns to look at her but his vision is all clouded up into senseless watercolor smears. Danny blinks and, numbly, realizes he’s crying. He doesn’t trust his voice not to crumble when he speaks, so the young halfa just nods mutely instead, swiping the back of his hand over his eyes.

 

Jazz disappears for a moment, then returns to drape a hot washcloth over Danny’s shoulder, and he can’t help but sigh into the warmth as it begins to loosen his pulled muscle. She leaves and comes back again, this time with two glasses and several tupperware containers in her arms, at least two of which are glowing faintly green.

 

Danny blinks dumbly at them as she settles her findings on the coffee table, only breaking from his dazed reverie when Jazz sticks the handle-end of a fork into his face. “Here,” she says, and a bit dotingly, “You gotta eat to keep up your strength. You’ll need it if you want to heal well and fast enough to deal with what’s coming.”

 

_ What’s coming? _ He wonders, only partially in jest, but says nothing, obediently taking the utensil and popping the lid on the dimmer of the contaminated containers. It’s “chinese” food, actually katsudon of all things, a shitty frozen-dinner rendition with too much salt and bland rice—but Danny must not have realized how hungry he’d been before because the second the smell of overcooked pork fills his nose his stomach twists with a pang, and he finds himself inhaling the cold takeout like his life depends on it.

 

The second container, this one obviously in much closer proximity to ectoplasm samples in the fridge, is full of some very green Italian that might be eggplant or chicken parmesan, although it’s too fargone to tell at a glance. He eats with more restraint this time, but still vigorously, snapping up strings of cold cheese with gusto. Eggplant, it turns out to be—the meat would be less mushy than this.  

 

Jazz watches him gobble up his meal with a vaguely critical eye, picking birdishly at some greasy leftover fries out of a paper Nasty Burger bag.

 

Eating real human sustenance like a normal, albeit very hungry person makes Danny feel much better, and he smiles shyly at his sister. “Thanks,” he mumbles, swallowing a wad of chilled pasta and vegetables. The weight of familiar food in his belly makes him feel a little more grounded, with their ectoplasmic additives yielding the extra bonus of quieting some of the unremitting embers of Hunger that linger in the pit of his stomach.

 

He nests one empty tupperware inside the other and puts them down on the coffee table, thanking his sister again for bringing the food over.

 

“Do you want more?” Asks Jazz, smirking wanly as she proffers the greasy paper bag. “You’re a bottomless pit. I won’t judge… much.”

 

Danny gives pause, offering a tepid shrug. “I think I’ll wait,” he admits. “I feel okay right now but I  _ really _ don’t wanna taste the eggplant twice.”

 

She chuckles a little bit at that. “Wouldn’t be a problem if you’d just slow down.” They sit in silence for a moment, brief, but oppressive, before Jazz reaches over to tuck a greasy clump of his bangs out of Danny’s face. “It’s gonna be okay,” she tells him, assured tone far beyond what he thinks is honest. “You know that, right?”

 

“I guess,” he answers, a bit curtly. “We’ll survive, at least. We always do. I just hope Mad— _ Mom _ ,” Danny silently kicks himself when it becomes obvious that Jazz has noticed his hesitation, but finishes, “and Dad and Vlad are alright.”

 

Jazz nods, sighing. “I don’t know that they are right now,” she confesses, “but they will be. They’re adults and they know how to deal with this—well, not  _ this _ , but things like it, anyway. You’re still a kid,” she tells him. “It’s not on you to fix things alone, no matter what dumb stuff you might say otherwise.” 

 

Privately, Danny begs to differ—he’s the reason they’re in this mess.  _ He _ antagonized Vlad to begin with.  _ He _ passed on dosing up when he had the chance, under the arrogant assumption that everything would go to plan. Danny knows better than that, and he knew it then, too, but he ignored the truth because it was inconvenient. What a stupid, childish mistake—one for which he can be afforded no excuse, because he is  _ not _ a child: he is an undead fucking  _ gladiator _ .  _ He _ is responsible for his own power, and he needs to act like it.

 

_ ‘Still a kid,’ my ass _ , he thinks bitterly. As much as he may want it, Danny knows that he does not have the luxury of being one. 

 

But if he says that out loud he’ll only worry his sister, so he just nods noncommittally and mumbles out a “maybe.”

 

“I mean it,” she insists, brows pinched into a frown as she leans over him. “I know that look. You’re gonna make things harder for everybody involved if you force yourself to bottle things up and deal with them without help.”

 

“I  _ know _ ,” he can’t help but scoff, tucking his shoulders defensively. “But the same goes for you, y’colossal nerd. You gotta stop acting like you’re grown up when shit goes down. Pretending you're in control just makes you screw up worse.”

 

“Don’t dodge the subject—but fine then,” she acquiesces, “I’ll quit if you will. That’ll be that. Is it a deal, then?”

 

For all of her show of briskness and maturity, Jazz is too naïve for her own good. Danny nods and shakes her warm hand with just a bit of flourish, smiling wearily at her; she beams back. He hopes the playful theatrics are enough to disguise his dishonesty, because he plans on repressing as much of this nightmare as possible as soon as he possibly can. 

 

Starting now.

 

* * *

 

Maddie’s head is pounding like a war drum. Blood roars painfully in her ears as she attempts to sit up, but the arm she’s using to prop herself up sinks into something soft—a mattress. The room spins and she groans at the sensation of her brain sloshing around in her skull, flopping back down onto her pillow with a grunt.

 

She knows without opening her eyes that this is he master bedroom where she and Jack sleep, mostly because this is the only king bed in the house, and she can faintly see the watery yellow light shining from the window through her eyelids.

 

Absently, she rubs her knuckles over her eyes, blinking rapidly to clear them of grit. She still feels utterly exhausted; the pull of the bags beneath her eyes makes it a struggle to keep them open, and a yawn builds in the back of Maddie’s throat. No longer is she so terribly afflicted by that overwhelming weariness now that she’s had some time to rest, but her body still aches tenderly, and sleep weighs heavy on her mind—only to be overpowered by the roiling pit of dread in her belly.

 

She thinks about what Danny had said: he isn’t human, and Maddie cannot possibly deny that, but she can’t just lie down and accept its permanence, as Danny seems to. The resignation in her baby’s voice, the unadulterated  _ hate _ he expressed then for himself makes the bird of Maddie’s heart flutter tremulously and close its beak hard on her throat. She stifles a sob.

 

_ The Accident, _ he’d said.  _ In Freshman year. _ That’s what caused… this. Maddie doesn’t believe in things like God or the Devil any more than she can see them with her own two eyes, but in the wake of recent events she has some faith in Hell.

 

_ Her _ negligence did this, twisted up her only son into something truly abhorrent, mutated and placeless. The consequences of Maddie’s mistakes, her arrogance is the reason Danny is being eaten alive by some untamable otherworldly evil—because she doesn’t think he was lying, out on the sidewalk; he’s himself.

 

But only for now. Jazz and Jack don’t seem to understand that part, the ghost’s duplicity. She doesn’t know how much time there is before that monster will rear its ugly head again and how long until it consumes her baby boy completely. He’s been grappling with the odious thing for years now, and the time for him is surely running short. Maddie  _ needs _ to find a way to cleave this beast away from Danny—from his  _ soul _ , as much as she hates using such emotional terms. That’s what it must be, though, and she clings to the heroism of the idea with what even she herself realises is an irrational fervor: she must be the one to pull the monstrous Phantom away from Danny’s soul and destroy it before it’s too late.

 

Maddie’s body screams in protest, but she lifts herself up and, with painful slowness, swings her legs over the side of the bed. Her pyjama shorts are sticky with sweat, clinging uncomfortably to her thighs and riding up when she shifts.

 

The plush carpet tickles between her toes as Maddie staggers across the room, leaning heavily against the wall for support. She can feel the tension of a plaster pulling at the skin of her back where it covers the cut on her shoulder, and a band-aid tugs at the fine hairs above her left brow—she must’ve been bandaged up while unconscious. 

 

With Herculean effort, she drags herself to the bathroom. Maddie can hear Jack and Vlad’s voices through the wall—probably from Jazz’s room, to give her some peace and privacy while she rests. Their words are clipped and grave, but she can’t quite make them out between the distance and the concussion that throbs in her ears.

 

Her knee pops when she sits on the closed toilet lid, panting. Once Maddie’s breath is caught she yanks herself up against the sink and turns on the faucet, cupping the chilly water in her hands to splash on her dirty face, dripping down the front of her tank top and ticking her chest. She feels like she’s been hit by a truck, and in the bathroom mirror Maddie looks it too.

 

Sweat-stiffened clumps of hair fall over her brows; a greasy and frazzled frame for her bruised, bloody face. There are streaks on her jaw where it seems someone tried to wipe the blood away, but thin trails of dried brown tug at her skin around the angry red slit of a half-scabbed cut: probably one that opened up while she slept, if the inconsistent direction of the bleeding is any indication.

 

Maddie’s battered ribs all but creak aloud as she leans over and throws the medicine cabinet open, beginning to rifle awkwardly through the Fenton family’s unsorted drugs. She growls, fumbling with generic zyrtec and cold medicine until her shaky fingers finally close on the thick, child-proof cap that marks the ibuprofen. Maddie shoves two liver-colored tablets onto her tongue, tipping her head back to swallow them dry. After a moment’s hesitation, she clumsily pops two more—just in case—and begins the achy trek back to the main bedroom.

 

She needs to rescue Danny, and there’s no time to waste… but when she sits on the edge of the bed to rest her sore, exhausted body, the dip of the mattress beneath her is all too inviting. Maddie doesn’t think she can make it down the stairs on her own, anyway, let alone fight to save her son’s life—but now she has a plan to sleep on, so she does.

 

* * *

 

Vlad twiddles his thumbs awkwardly, sitting next to Jack on Jasmine’s modest bedspread. It’s not an ideal location, but her room at least provides some semblance of privacy for the two of them and some peace for the remaining people in the house—Maddie and Danny apparently asleep or something like it, and Jazz flitting back and forth to compulsively tend to them both.

 

He shrugs a little bit, rolling some tension from his sore shoulders, especially the one held stiff by bandages. The wound beneath twinges uncomfortably at the motion, but at least the pressure on the injury is consistent and smoother than the awkward scratchiness of Jazz’s torn sweater. Jack’s bandage job holds well.

 

“You’re okay?” He asks, a bit weakly. Jack seems unprepared for the question, eyes widening slightly as his brows move up to his hairline.

 

“Me?” He inquires dazedly. “I’m not in bad shape, I guess. More worried about everybody else.”

 

Vlad nods, vaguely amicable despite the thin frown that tugs at his lips. “Mmm. Sure your jaw isn’t bothering you? I don’t mind fetching ice.” 

 

“It’s fine. I’m not worried about me.”

 

He sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to ward off his inexorable headache. “Young Daniel especially, I presume?”

 

“Yeah,” Jack bobs his head noncommittally. “He’s not doing well, I don’t think. Jazz is doing her best but she’s just a kid, too, and I don’t know how to deal with this. I mean, lookit me! Hiding in my daughter’s bedroom while she takes care of her brother and mom.” He lowers his head, massaging his temples hard with the heels of his hands in a mirroring of Vlad’s gesture. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so helpless in all my life,” Jack admits bitterly, voice barely a whisper.

 

“Please don’t,” says Vlad, very softly, looking anxiously away from his friend. “You’ve done everything you could. You’re just one man. It’s more than understandable that you’ll be wearing thin, too.”

 

Jack seems to shrug off the other man’s feeble attempts at consolation. “Thanks, Vladdie.”

 

They sit together in awkward silence, and he traces the abstract pastel patterns on the binding of a scrapbook that sits innocuously on Jazz’s nightstand. Multitudinous slips of paper and colored stickers poke out from the tops of its pages, marking notable places within the handmade book. Absently, Vlad cards his fingers over the filmy Post-it notes, taking some subdued comfort in the quiet flicking noises they make when he brushes them.

 

“I don’t want this to destroy him,” Vlad finally says. Tears prick sharp and hot at his eyes. “Danny has so much ahead of him but he’s going to resent himself for this, I know it.” Jack opens his mouth and closes it again, but, unable to find words, doesn’t answer. Vlad takes his silence as a prompt to continue.

 

“And I can’t help but feel it’s my fault. I—I discounted his Vice, how much it would hurt him. I was selfish, pure and simple, Jack.” Vlad sighs and shakes his head, “I thought I was special, that no one else could possibly understand what I was going through, even with the knowledge that he was also a hybrid.” He chokes a little, blinking tears from his eyes. Jack does not interrupt save to curl their fingers together, rubbing his thumb soothingly across the back of Vlad’s hand.

 

“I thought that he was too young to understand pain. I was wrong, Jack,  _ so _ wrong!” He shakes his head, hastily wiping his face and clearing his throat in a vain attempt to mask his crying. “Because he’s so young he’s suffered far more than I ever have. He’s forced to grow up so damn fast! And all I’ve done is help him along. It’s my fau—”

 

Jack squeezes his hand and growls, “No. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.”

Vlad blinks rapidly at his friend, brows furrowed in confusion as the larger man continues: “I had my suspicions long before it got to this point, you know that. I thought I’d be doing Danno a favor by giving him space and letting him come to me if he ever needed help.” He barks a quavering laugh, shaking his head. “I wasn’t even sure I was onto anything at all. Maybe I was swiping at shadows, y’know?”

 

Vlad narrows his eyes, crossing his arms over the baggy T-shirt Jack’s lent him for the time being. “Jack, that’s utterly foolish,” he sniffs, still teary-eyed. “They always tell parents to give teenagers space. That’s always been the thing to do—and you were just doing what you thought was best for him, and the best you could.” He crosses his arms, a mite defensively. 

 

“Besides,” he continues, “you weren’t even sure. I knew with certainty the full extent of Daniel’s situation, at least in a broad sense, and I failed to simply consider the consequences of my actions.” Vlad worries his lip, pensive, but stiffly pats Jack’s shoulder in a well-meaning, but ultimately unavailing attempt to comfort him. “You had no idea at all, and by no fault of your own, so it’s senseless to blame yourself for not acting on an unsubstantiated hunch.”

“You’ve been running your mouth, Vladdie.” Jack sighs, but offers the other man a weary smile. “I can’t compete with all this speech-giving of yours: let’s agree to be guilty fuck-ups together, how about that?”

 

Vlad is so surprised by Jack’s vaguely nihilistic outburst that he actually laughs despite the coil of guilt weighing at his belly and the twinge in his injured shoulder.

 

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Wakefulness returns to Maddie not too long afterwards. She shivers—she hadn’t even the energy or presence of mind to wiggle beneath the covers before falling asleep, and the cold sweat slicking her skin raises goosebumps as it evaporates.

 

Very carefully and with great effort, Maddie sits up again, tucking her legs up and crossing them beneath her. She groans, yawn devolving into a wince as her overworked muscles stretch and cramp. Her entire body feels like it’s been beaten with an aluminum bat, in all honesty, and Maddie resists the urge to whimper aloud at its protest. It must’ve been some significant time since taking the ibuprofen, because it seems to be wearing off now. It seems safe to ballpark something like four or five hours, if the duller lilac tones seeping through the curtains are anything to go on.

 

Maddie shivers again, blinking tiredly towards the door—slightly ajar, she realizes. Little puffs of new air seep into the room and tickle her skin, drawing fresh shudders from her beaten frame.

 

With a creak the door pivots open and Jazz’s pale face pokes through the threshold. Her green eyes are large and solicitous, framed by loose wisps of disheveled orange hair and scattered freckles. Maddie thinks she looks ill, but the teen pushes the door the rest of the way open with her foot and enters the room, a bowl clasped carefully in both hands.

 

“Hi mom,” she says, oddly shy.

 

“Hi,” answers Maddie in return, taking the bowl on autopilot as Jazz pushes it into her hands.

 

Cereal: bran flakes, she thinks. Maddie spoons them into her mouth automatically, and they taste like ash on her tongue. She doesn’t feel particularly hungry—a little bit nauseous, even—but Maddie knows that she needs to stay nourished and hydrated if she wants to be of any help. Jazz watches her eat in silence, only disturbing her mother with the dip of the mattress as she sits down beside her.

 

“Thanks,” Maddie says at length. 

 

Jazz nods mildly in return. “Yup,” she replies. “How are you feeling?”

 

“Sore.”

 

“I know this must be hard for you—everything with Danny… his, uh… Condition. Are you handling everything okay?”

 

She shrugs. “I’m processing,” admits Maddie, absently twirling the spoon in her bowl. She can’t bring herself to make eye contact as she asks, “How is he?”

 

“Not good,” Jazz replies almost immediately, and an biting eddy of guilt washes over Maddie. “He’s spent most of the past few hours in a dissociative episode, but I got him to eat while he was lucid.”   
  


Maddie’s mouth goes desert dry. “Lucid?” She echoes in thinly veiled horror, thinking of the empty, animal eyes that bored into her down in Vlad’s basement. Did the monster take hold again while she was so selfishly relaxing?

 

“Yeah. I’m no professional,” the teen disclaims, seemingly oblivious to her mother’s fear, “but I think Danny’s suffering from some kind of depersonalization disorder.” At Maddie’s blank look Jazz proceeds to elaborate, explaining that “It’s a mental illness, technically. People usually develop it in response to, uh…” She throws her mother a searching gaze before mumbling out a very small “trauma.”

 

“Trauma,” Maddie parrots dumbly. “He’s not—he wasn’t  _ violent _ , was he?”

 

Jazz totally misses Maddie’s intent as she splutters, a vaguely clinical activist’s tone taking her voice. “No, no no! Very few diagnosed people are dangerous at all! I should’ve explained what exactly the disorder does: it’s like a defense mechanism.”

 

“He’s safe, then?”  

 

Nodding, Jazz clarifies, “When people are traumatized they sometimes separate themselves from their emotions, like an out-of-body experience or watching a movie or something like that. It allows them to deal with the dangerous situation without totally shutting down. But, if it persists after the triggering event for long enough, it counts as a disorder.”

 

“And D-Danny has this, you think?” Asks Maddie.

 

“Probably. He’s kind of just been staring off into space for the longest time, if you’re wondering. There’s no immediate risk to anybody in this house.”

 

That doesn’t make Maddie feel better. “Is—” She worries her lip, blinking rapidly to clear the pearling moisture in her eyes and refusing to meet her daughter’s surveying gaze. “Is it because of all this? What I did?”

 

Jazz’s loose expression pulls taunt at that, brows pinched, mouth pressed into a thin line as she leans forward, putting a warm hand around her mother’s shoulder. “Of course not!” She all but shouts, grasping clumsily at Maddie’s sweaty hand. “You did what you thought was right, Mom. You tried to help him, and he knows that.”

 

Maddie feels like she’s going to be sick. “I put a gun to his head,” she whispers hoarsely, almost inaudible even to her own ears.

 

“What’s that?” Her daughter asks, tipping her head and peering at her with wide green eyes. “I didn’t hear you, sorry.”

 

She squeezes Jazz’s hand hard enough to make the girl flinch a little, and she would probably have pulled away if it weren’t for the fact that Maddie’s own fingers are too weak and shaky to maintain her grip. “I put a gun to his head,” she says, voice trembling as she raises it. “I was gonna pull the trigger then. I shot him just now, too.” Something wet splashes on her bare thigh, and Maddie brings her free hand to her face to find herself crying.

 

Noiseless sobs wrack her frame, but she refuses Jazz’s distraught attempts at comfort. The teen shushes her mother, stroking her sweat-sticky back and wiping tears away with her thumb. “It’s okay,” Jazz assures, “he’s as okay as anybody could possibly expect in this situation—better, even. We closed up the wound and he’s eating just fine and he doesn’t blame you for anything at all, Mom. He’s  _ okay _ .”

 

“No he isn’t,” Maddie whimpers. “I went after something… the Phantom, it must’ve been. I wanted to free him but I hurt him instead. That monster is still hiding inside him and there’s nothing I can do. He’s my baby, Jazz.” She stares down at the teen, struggling for words. “He’s your brother, too. We can’t just wait while that thing bides its time! You  _ must _ understand—we—I need to save him and I  _ can’t _ .” Maddie buries her head in her hands, swallowing a wet sob that claws savagely at the back of her throat. There’s a fire swelling beneath her ribs, choking her as she cries.

 

Jazz plants a soft kiss on her mother’s head, sighing warmly into her hair. “You’re right: you can’t save him, and neither can I.” Maddie coughs hard, eyes wide and uncomprehending. Despair roars in her gut.

 

“What—”

 

“He doesn’t need saving, Mom.”  

 

Maddie jumps to her feet so fast she almost falls over, and her bowl clatters unceremoniously to the ground. She’s sickeningly dizzy, but her hands are clenched into trembling fists, and she can’t quite find it in herself to temper the indignant rage erupting in her gut. 

 

“That isn’t funny,” she snarls, voice low and severe. “This isn’t a joke. There is—” She rakes her fingers through her hair, tossing her head in desperation and disbelief. Maddie stumbles back, bending over to catch her breath before she can manage to continue. “There is a f-goddamn  _ monster _ trying to—to  _ kill _ Danny!”

 

Jazz just stares, incredulous. “No… there isn’t. You’re—” she swallows hard, and when she next speaks her tone is painted with sudden venom. “You’re paranoid, and you’re wrong. You saw him downstairs and everything is—not good, of course, but he’s not being  _ possessed _ or any of the bullshit I know you’re gonna spit.”

 

“It’s the Phantom,” Maddie insists, still reeling from her daughter’s abrupt change in demeanor, but ultimately unphased. No amount of ignorant exhortation from Jazz, as beloved as she is, will stop Maddie from doing what needs to be done. “I saw it with my own two eyes and it’s going to come back after Danny. It  _ ate _ a person with his body, Jazz. It used him and it—it  _ ruined _ hi—”

 

Maddie doesn’t have time to react when Jazz lashes out. A curtain of her hair fans out behind Jazz as she spins, and when she speaks her voice is quavering with barely-controlled rage. “Shut the fuck up and maybe listen to him for once.” The door slams behind Jazz hard enough for Maddie to flinch, and she sits back down on the side of the bed, alone with spilt milk and cereal crumbs on the floor.

 

* * *

 

Danny’s neck prickles uncomfortably as his fingers close around the frigid brass doorknob. He still doesn’t know how to parse his feelings, but he heard Jazz shout and the loud bang of the door’s slamming shut and is now struck by the overwhelming desire to  _ act _ . Part of him thinks he might make things worse, but he feels useless and sick just doing nothing at all. Sitting in desolate torpor for hours on end may be in many ways gratifying, but holding the ache silent in his chest just makes things worse and he knows it. He needs to talk to Maddie.

 

On the first try, he stops. What if she pulls a weapon on him again? It’s already happened three times in the last seventy-two hours, at least. What can he possibly do if she decides to shoot? Danny doesn’t trust himself now not to hurt her by mistake.

 

She probably hates him, he thinks. He lied to her for years and brutalized her long-time friend before her eyes. He’s certain Maddie thinks of him as a monster, or worse. There was hate in her voice, vicious and undiluted. Even if she doesn’t actively try to hurt or kill him, there’s no way in hell she’d ever forgive him or entertain civil conversation for any length of time. Best case scenario, she’ll tolerate him—but only barely. 

 

Danny craves emotional comfort from his mother, but there’s a fat fucking chance he’ll ever get that again. There’s only one way to find out, he rationalizes, and that’s to just get the ordeal over with before his nerve subsides.

 

His hands shake, and what little fortitude he can muster just isn’t enough. He doesn’t open the door.


	10. X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning ends.
> 
> CW: violence/gore, cannibalism, coarse language, mental health problems (dissociation again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo boy. made it. we officially done with the first 'arc' today  
> next stop is recovery, but before then this story is gonna go on a bit of a hiatus while i plan the next part out. this was originally a oneshot and i honestly continued it on a whim, so the next bit i'd rather have organized.  
> thank you for reading, and please take the time for hte other notes at the bottom!!!

Maddie is the one who comes to Danny, in the end. She stands in the threshold at the bottom of the stairs, watching him while he rests curled up on the sofa. Danny can feel her gaze on his back, but he pretends to keep sleeping. Her puffy eyes cut blankly into him, mouth slack. He can hear her heartbeat pounding like a jackhammer in her chest, if the tension shaking her form isn’t nearly enough to indicate her fear.

 

She walks over to him very slowly, like she’s coming up on a wild animal and doesn’t want to spook it. That’s fair, Danny thinks. Maddie sits down on the floor in front of the couch, knees bent and fingers latticed anxiously over them.

 

“Are you awake?” She asks, slightly louder than normal speaking volume.

 

At first he doesn’t deign to reply, but even the brief pause makes guilt constrict Danny’s chest. “Yes,” he mumbles, but makes no move to roll over and face her.

 

“I did some thinking,” Maddie tells him.

 

“Yeah?”

 

He feels her nod against his leg. “Yeah,” she echoes. “I want to talk about the Phantom—if that’s okay.”

 

Danny worries his lip hard, shifting beneath the quilt. He’s cozy in his spot on the couch, and while he’d much rather stay there and be comfortable, it suddenly makes him feel naked and vulnerable. He lies there on his side with his unprotected back to her and can’t suppress a shudder at the thought. She could shoot him right in the back of the neck and he’d be paralyzed or worse—perfect to be experimented on and cut open alive.

 

“Can we go up to my room?” asks Danny. It’s irrational and certainly not particularly  _ normal _ , but being on his own turf in his Lair would make the young halfa feel much better about his ability to safely restrain Maddie in the even of a fight. 

 

Discounting the savage little piece of him that thinks it would be wonderful to watch her squirm, of course.

 

She hums in agreement, “Okay,” and then, “whatever makes you feel best, sweetie.”

 

The affectionate address raises bile in Danny’s throat, but he nods too and wiggles into a sitting position, shedding the blanket and standing up beside her.

 

Belatedly, Danny glances down at his shirtless body and the topography of scars puckering his skin—Maddie’s terrified gaze traces the lines of his chest, lingering guiltily on the swollen lump of scar tissue on his belly and the crinkled burn on his shoulder. The products of her actions.

 

She wets her lips, bunching her legs up against her chest. Danny reaches out to help her up, but she refuses his assistance and stands on her own. Maddie trails him in unnerving silence all the way upstairs and into his Lair.

 

Grimacing, Danny crosses his arms and kicks the door shut behind him, while Maddie sits down on the end of his bed. “I’m glad you’ve rested,” he remarks, taking in her disheveled appearance with silent guilt. He doesn’t move, though, afraid to provoke his mother with unexpected action.

 

“Y-you—Danny—I—” Maddie has definitely noticed that this is more than a teenager’s room. She looks pale and frightened, curling in on herself defensively.

 

He worries his lip, but proceeds with speaking over her. “Yeah. Me.” Without his consent, Danny’s hand wanders down the side of his navel to cover the bullet wound on his stomach. “It’s okay. Can I sit next to you?”

 

Maddie opens her mouth, but closes it again, opting to nod mutely instead of voicing response. Danny pads slowly across the carpet, throwing a leg up on the bed and tucking the other behind him. He clasps his hands tight in his lap, averting his gaze while his mother stares after him. Her scrutinizing eye makes him feel exposed, like a specimen beneath a microscope.

 

Her breath hitches like she’s going to say something, and she blinks rapidly to clear her eyes of tears. Danny waits patiently while she wipes her eyes and wrings her hands, shoulders wobbling as she struggles to get her breathing under control. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea he thinks, but it’s too late to turn back now.

 

“Does it hurt?” She finally asks.

 

“The gunshots?” Danny questions, gesturing vaguely to the bullet scar. “No. Not anymore.”

 

“Good,” she replies. “I’m glad you’re okay. Now—” Maddie sighs heavily, steeling herself and searching for words. “How are you connected to the Phantom, exactly? It used you, back in Wisconsin—how? Did it just overpower you, or is there… a deal?”

 

He blinks at her, arching a brow. This is not quite how he expected this conversation to go; maybe with a little more crying and apologizing, and a dramatic, cathartic hug to begin their healing journey. Instead, Danny just feels… bare. Like she’s a doctor asking after his health, only interested in that clinical, impersonal way conducive to someone getting their job done and nothing more.

 

Giving it straight seems the best way to go, because in all honesty he doesn’t know what else to do. It’s far too late to lie his way out of it, and even if it weren’t, he’s tired of doing that. So, “I  _ am _ the Phantom,” states Danny, simply. “We’re the same.”  

 

Maddie sways a little, and he watches a sick, pinched expression overtake her features, speaking of guilt and bile rising in her throat as she covers her mouth with her hands. “I’m s-sorry,” she whimpers, genuinely, and to Danny her devastation is a punch to the gut. “I thought—I wish I could’ve saved you, baby. It’s not too late to change things.”

 

The teen silently smothers the urge to snap at her unheralded naïvety. He knows damn well that he’s the monster in this story, not the damsel in distress. He doesn’t deserve her pity. “Every-fucking-one in this goddamn place seems to think I need  _ saving _ ,” he hisses without thinking, lip curled into a harsh grimace as he grips his arms and hugs himself. Danny can’t deny that he feels safer in anger than he does in baring his heart. “I  _ don’t. _ ”

 

“You’re mad,” she murmurs, voice tremulous and small. “Please don’t be. I’m sorry.”

 

He huffs loudly through his nose; Maddie is right. He is angry—just not at her. “I am too,” hums Danny. “Didn’t mean to snap atcha.”

 

“It’s okay. Just—please let me help you. We can get rid of the Phantom and you can be  _ whole _ .”

 

“No,” He insists, struggling not to outright snarl at his mother. “You’re not listening to me. I don’t need your help, and even if I did, I’ve survived worse and I can do it again.”

 

“No,” echoes Maddie after a beat, clearly afraid. Danny finds he hasn’t the presence of mind to care; the chilling fog of detachment is pushing through the cracks in his brain, eating up his feelings like piranhas guzzling offal.  _ Good riddance _ , a nasty little voice hisses in the back of his mind. “I saw what happened,” she says. “You’re just going to—what? Accept it? You don’t have to!”

 

“I do,” he avers. “I told you it was from the Accident. That’s  _ years _ ago. It already happened and I can’t change it. Nobody can. We just gotta move on, I guess.”

 

“But I can find a way—we can separate you from the ghost!” 

 

Danny tries and fails to swallow a low rattling noise that creeps up his throat, only managing to bite it off after a soft growl has bubbled to the surface, so the damage is done. “You’re not  _ listening _ ,” he repeats, pleading. Something foreign constricts his chest. “There is no ghost, other than me.”

 

“You said that before,” she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “But you must be misled, Danny, that’s not possible!”

 

“Just ‘cause you can’t wrap your head around it doesn’t mean it can’t happen,” he scoffs, perhaps a bit more harshly than he’d initially intended. He sighs, tucking his shoulders defensively. “I told you I don’t get it either, but that’s the way shit is. I’m not wasting my energy on tryna work around the truth, and neither should you.”

 

“But it’s not too late to f-fix things… I could fix  _ you _ !”

 

Danny’s temper flares of its own accord, but he chokes out the growl building in his throat and stomps his irrational rage to silence. “One more time.”  He looses a farouche sigh, swallowing his anger. “I shouldn’t be the one explaining this to you.”

 

Maddie just stares, uncomprehending and afraid. “You have no hope left,” she says, like she’s exposed some hideous conspiracy. He doesn’t need to look at her face to know that she’s crying, so Danny just stares down at his bloodless knuckles instead.

 

“Please let me help, Danny. I meant what I said. You can b-be human again, with help.”

 

Against his better judgement, against his better nature, Danny goes careening over the fucking edge. He detests himself for doing it, but as he flicks an ice crystal from his fingertip he comes upon the realization that coming up here was a grievous mistake. He purses his lips and hopes that Maddie doesn’t notice that his teeth are sharpening beneath them despite his desperate attempts to stomp the fury down. He’s giving himself emotional whiplash, leaping between hollowing apathy and seam-bursting rage. Neither option is good.

 

“You don’t fucking  _ listen _ , you—Even if you could  _ fix _ me,” he grinds out through clenched teeth, “I wouldn’t want you to.”

 

“What?” She freezes, shaking near-imperceptibly. “Why? After what it made you do?”

 

He huffs. “Nobody  _ made _ me do anything. I was stupid. It was an accident.”

 

Maddie gives him an incredulous look. “That was no ‘accident,’” she tells him. “That was a  _ butchering _ , Danny, and you sure as Hell wouldn’t do something like that on your own.”

 

“Maybe I would,” he spits. “You don’t know.”

 

“That’s not helping anything, Danny.”

 

The teen grumbles, picking determinedly at the drawstring of his sweatpants, pushing his nails beneath the aglet and unwinding the little braided cord. It helps to give his hands something to do, but he knows he can’t just sit here and say nothing with Maddie across from him.

 

“I didn’t mean to,” he reiterates. “I wasn’t… in my right mind,” confesses Danny.

 

“Why?” Maddie asks. “Because of the Phantom?”

 

He shakes his head feverishly. “No! Because of  _ me _ . I wasn’t all there, but I was still me…” Danny leans back, raking his fingers through his hair as he struggles to compose himself and organize his thoughts. “Think of me like an addict, I guess. I need to dose up on ectoplasm or I get fucky and probably die, eventually.”

 

“Why Vlad, then?”

 

“Meant to hit Wisconsin,” Danny half-lies. He may be out of the closet, so to speak, but that doesn’t mean Vlad’s secret is his to tell. This is his own fault, and he owes the elder halfa that at the least after all that he’s done.

 

Maddie sighs. “Why don’t you let me ‘detox’ you, then? We can find a  _ cure _ .”

 

Danny bites his lip, willing the tension to drain from his shoulders. It doesn’t really work. He reaches out, rather roughly, and takes one of Maddie’s hands between his own. Her skin feels hot and thin, as though he can break through it with only the softest squeeze. Like choking a bird. The halfa pulls his mother’s frail hand up against his chest; her fingers recoil from the cold, blemished skin he bares to her, but Danny restrains her so she cannot pull away. He guides her hand over to the middle, between his lungs and slightly to the left.

 

He waits anxiously while Maddie feels for his heartbeat. Her bewildered and frightened expression gives way to one of true horror when she can’t find one—not a  _ real _ one, anyway. Danny knows that his heart does not go  _ lub-dub _ like clockwork against his ribs. It murmurs and pops and makes indistinct sticky noises, dutifully gurgling through ectoplasm that is almost too thick to pump. It only squeezes out half of the norm at rest, Danny thinks, in slow, laborious beats.

 

“Feel that?” He asks quietly.

 

Maddie nods, leaning forward to press her ear against the center of his chest. Danny can feel tears seeping from her eyes and dripping down his navel where her cheek makes contact.

 

Danny only speaks after a moment of silence so the vibration of his voice doesn’t overwhelm what he needs her to understand. “You hear it too.”

 

“Yes,” whispers Maddie, pulling away to sit on her feet atop the bedspread. Her quavering voice sends a pang of guilt wriggling between his ribs, but he steels himself and soldiers through.

 

“Let’s say you took away my ghost half,” he posits. “With a ticker like mine, I’d be dead before I could take my first human breath. Even if that wasn't the case, I’ve thought about it before, when all this was new to me,” Danny admits, “and I’ve learned that splitting a hybrid isn’t so easy as I figured it was back then.”

 

Maddie glares at him, though far more desultory than angry—she clearly hasn’t the energy to keep playing this game, not after all this. It would be a lot easier, Danny thinks, if she’d just  _ hear _ what he’s been saying to her. “You’re a high-schooler,” she argues sorely. “I’m a PhD. There must be something I can think of that you haven’t. It’s still possible.”

 

“Oh, I know it is.” Danny makes eye contact with his mother, desperately willing his face to convey what he doesn’t know how to express in words. “I—We tried it, once.”

 

“And?”

 

“It worked. I killed myself.” It’s close enough to the truth that the pain constricting his throat is real, and Danny swallows a sob. He barks out a venomous little chuckle, unexpected even to himself, and blinks away tears. “Lucky I’m close friends with God.” He laughs again, louder, and he knows from its wobbly shrillness that he probably sounds like an asylum patient—but something in him is crumbling and he can’t hold it in any longer.

 

She stares at him. “You  _ killed _ yourself?  _ God _ ?”

 

Danny nods, swallowing hard to wet his scratchy throat. “You can’t take this away from me. You’re asking to make—to turn a mule into a horse ‘cause it came from one.” He grimaces, averting his gaze. “Only way to do it is to rip it apart. Gotta kill me, y’see? And I—hah, I don’t wanna die. Not again.” 

 

Maddie flinches, but Danny watches out of the corner of his eye as she reaches over, shuffling on her knees to sit in front of him—she grabs him under the arms and yanks him into a crushing hug. He is slightly taller than her now, so she puts her head on his shoulder and strokes his hair, rubbing gentle circles into his tense back. His manic giggling dissolves into raw sobs that tear at his throat, then hoarse whimpers as he runs out of air. For a long time he simply leans into his mother’s trembling embrace and hyperventilates, breathing in her homey scent. For the first time in what must be a thousand days and nights, she makes him feel a little safer.

 

“I’m sorry,” he finally mumbles against her neck, voice worn and emotions spent. “You didn’t need to hear that.”

 

“No,” she snaps, forceful but not unkind. “Maybe—I think that’s exactly what I needed to hear.” Maddie leans back to cup Danny’s face in her hands, running her thumbs adoringly over his tear-stained cheeks. “My beautiful baby boy,” she sighs. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

 

Danny bites his lip, but stops himself before he breaks the skin. “I love you.”

 

“Even after all this? After I hurt you so bad, sweetie?”

 

He nods, wiping his eyes on his bare forearm. “Always.” The teen growls low in his chest, not as a threat but a detached attempt at self-comfort that siphons the needless breath from his lungs. “I was selfish,” he tells Maddie. “I should’ve—” 

 

She laughs, tears glistening in her shadowed blue eyes. “It’s not selfish to be afraid.” Maddie sighs, looking down at her knees. “You—” she cuts herself off, swallowing hard. Her face makes it seem to Danny that she’s struggling to spit out the words. “I was… wrong. I can’t—I don’t understand you. I can’t understand exactly what you are, or how it happened, or even if it matters. But… I’m gonna try. I  _ want _ to try. I don’t get this, Danny, but I know that you’re my baby and I want you to be safe and happy. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that happens.”

 

“Oh.” Danny blinks owlishly, taken aback by his mother’s sudden change of heart. She can’t possibly be okay with the idea that Phantom is a part of him, can she? After all this, the suffering he caused her? She’s seen ghosts as subhuman for as long as he can remember—she had to be dragged kicking and screaming just to get to this point. It doesn’t sit right with him, but…  

 

“Will you let me do that, Danny?”

 

“Yes—please, M-mom.”

 

Warmth blooms in his chest. The weight on his shoulders feels just a little lighter. He’s so, so tired of fighting, and this is the chance he’s needed to heal; the wave of relief washing over him is all but tangible. Danny leans forward and plants a clammy kiss on his mother’s forehead, shaky but gentle as he can. 

 

The wait is over.

 

* * *

 

Maddie knew that Danny was damaged before, but this cements it far too strongly in her mind. She’s no psychologist, not like Jazz, but she’s pretty damn sure that she just watched her only son have a mental break right in front of her eyes.

 

She holds him and suppresses her own shaking, petting his hair and holding his hand. She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’s hurting her when he squeezes too tightly.

 

He isn’t dangerous, she doesn’t think, not right now, but he still scares her. She can’t forget about what happened with Vlad in the lab. For now, Maddie believes her son’s claims that it was an accident, but that doesn’t mean there is no possibility of it happening again. Danny, despite his obvious attempts to hold himself together, is crumbling—traumatized at best, and at worst violently unstable.

 

And he needs more than she can give him.

 

Everything she’s known, all that she’s built her career upon; her  _ life’s work _ must be untrue, and Maddie hates it… but the alternative is that Danny isn’t real. The silent tears seeping into her tank top are fake and so are the trembling fingers wrapped around her own. 

 

If she’s going to be scientific about it, her theories about ghosts are largely conjecture. Educated guesses, she supposes, aren’t worth much against the throb of a living pulse, however cold and slow, beneath the pads of her fingers. That’s empirical evidence that can trump any equation claiming it impossible.

 

Maddie’s entire career is rooted in blind postulation, a shot in the dark that has not only missed its intended target but damaged her family in its flight.

 

In the face of that, the speed of Danny’s heartbeat and the sickness in his veins doesn’t seem to matter so much. He cries quietly into her neck for what feels like a long time, but eventually goes limp and quiet. His already-sluggish pulse slows to a crawling near-standstill while he sleeps, and Maddie lowers him onto the mattress. He needs the rest, she thinks.

 

He looks peaceful like this, expression slack in unconsciousness, fingers curled loosely into his bedsheets for comfort. The swollen black bags under his eyes are far too telling, and Maddie’s chest aches with the knowledge that she is so largely responsible for their presence. She brushes a long clump of Danny’s bangs from his face, idly noticing that his ears are tapered. It's not an absolute, she knows, but many ghosts have that. She isn't sure why.

 

She isn’t sure about a lot of things, really. “Close friends with God,” he said. Did he mean that literally? Despite herself, Maddie yearns to indulge the flurry of questions spinning in her head. Did he really commit suicide, of all things? How would that even work if he’s already dead?

 

She feels guilty for being so curious, too. The feeling gnaws at her belly, lapping at her resolve like water over clay, diminishing it until Maddie fears it's entirely gone. She's a scientist, and in some ways the habit can’t be helped, but she needs to quell her desire for knowledge, at least for now. Danny doesn’t need that.

 

Maddie has seen firsthand how skittish he is in the wake of this nightmare. Pressing him with selfish questions about his physiology is guaranteed to do no more than damage him further, no matter how gratifying the answers may seem in imagination. They are not worth the cost of Danny’s health.

 

Despite the newfound honesty between them, it feels to Maddie as though Danny’s revelation just unearthed more questions than answers. He hadn’t made his bed, so it’s more than easy enough for her to pull the tangled blanket out and over him, tucking his chin beneath the hem. She kisses him once on the cheek, and it’s like kissing a corpse, bloodless and clammy and chilled beneath her lips.

 

She doesn’t think about it too hard, and leaves the room. As she closes the door behind her, a stark wave of relief washes over Maddie, scrubbing out the creeping dark that seemed to encroach on her within the room. She loves Danny dearly, but there’s no denying that he can be unnerving, to say the least, especially from the confines of his bedroom. 

 

Maddie has witnessed this phenomenon before, wherein a ghost imbues an area with its energy in order to manipulate it to its will. Usually, this takes place in designated territories of the Ghost Zone dimension, but it makes sense that Danny would focus his power on someplace already recognized as “home” in his subconscious. What has Maddie more curious, however, is how exactly he got the custom-rigged ghost alarm system to ignore what must be a significant ectosignature coming from his room—and from Danny himself, for that matter, though she suspects his signature is dampened when in human form.

 

Sometimes it seems like he is far bigger than his form suggests, looming and predatory and indomitable, while others he has no presence at all, a silent, ethereal observer just a touch away from disappearing. A pang strikes Maddie at that, twisting up her guts with icy shame. She never paid it any mind, with more important things to do. She had always thought herself the more responsible member of their relationship, but watching Jack dutifully pick up the pieces just proves to her the opposite.

 

She broke their family, she knows now. A parent’s job is to protect their children, to make sure they are healthy and provided for and  _ safe _ . Maddie? She’s crushed her kids. It’s not wrong to have ambition, to strive for better, to dedicate oneself to learning. She  _ knows _ this—but she crossed a line. 

 

An indignant little piece of her wants to blame Jack and the kids, but it is painfully obvious that no real fault can lie with them. Jazz in particular had always been consistently vocal in her stance on the humanity of ghosts, and despite his comparative reservation on ghost-related matters, Danny stood firm with her. Even Jack, working alongside Maddie, had expressed similar concerns, but she had disregarded them all as being ignorant of her studies.

 

When she swallows, her throat feels like broken glass. Peer-review is among the most basic prerequisites for respectability in science. When your answers don’t match up with everyone else’s, you might be a visionary, able to see with clarity where others cannot. Or the problem could lie inward.

 

Maddie knows now, with certainty, where she falls.

 

She heads downstairs and starts on cleaning up. She does the dishes, more slowly than is necessary, carefully rinsing each plate and cup before settling it on the washer rack. Turning the dishwasher on at the end almost feels redundant, but she does it anyway, just to be safe, and to listen to its hum. Maddie strips the cushion covers from the sofa and gathers up the dirty towels and sheets, stained dark brown with Vlad’s old blood, and washes them all, scrubbing stain remover into the blood spots by hand before putting it all into the washing machine.

 

The house is empty and silent save the quiet noises of settling and the quiet rumbling of the wash. Danny is asleep, Jazz is holed up in her room, and Vlad and Jack are somewhere else upstairs, probably talking or resting in the master bedroom. Giving her hands something to do is therapeutic, but the quiet gets to Maddie, and she can’t help but remember that she’s tired. It seems like an afterthought, really. She can’t sleep anyway, even if she were to try, not with the vague drip of anxiety sloshing in her gut.

 

So she just mills awkwardly about this house, tidying and readjusting the littlest things with a fervor bordering on compulsion. She decides that there are still spots on the sheets and they should wash again. There are scuffs on the floor near the front door and one of the floorboards at the bottom of the stairs is loose enough to jiggle, if she tugs hard enough. These things need her attention, she decides, more than the looming threshold to the basement stairs that gapes at her like a game-pit in the dark. There are traps at the bottom, she knows, and if she falls in Maddie won’t be able to get out.

 

The sky has gone from washed-out lilac to a steadily darkening gradient of tropical indigo and red by the time Maddie runs out of inane chores to distract herself with. People have moved around upstairs, doors opened and shut, and she is fairly sure everyone else is asleep.

 

Bracing herself, she ventures into the lab.

 

* * *

 

Vlad is resting down the hall and through the wall in a room alone with Jack. Danny can smell his blood where it leaks from his remaining wounds, citrus-sweet and syrupy beneath the human tang of iron. He takes slow, deep breaths, trying to calm himself, but only sucking in further lungfuls of Food  _ Food Food resting hiding waiting to be caught to fill him up with— _

 

His eyes open up and Vlad is halfway to Plasmius, little fanged teeth bared in a panicked snarl, eyes bleeding red into cobalt as he writhes beneath Danny’s grip. Their eyes meet, and Danny lunges, jaws closing hard around the elder halfa’s throat. Hot blood floods his mouth, reeking of copper and pain. 

 

He  _ hates _ it. He wants to pull back, spit it out, but his body won’t obey. The tang of iron in his mouth sends little thrills shaking his frame, muscles twitching excitedly as the flavor paints his throat, warm and sticky and all too like the ectoplasm that makes him slaver and froth. Danny isn’t a halfa. He’s  _ Hungry _ and whether the flesh squirming in his teeth is steamy red or icy green doesn’t really matter because the pit in his belly keeps gaping regardless.

 

Vlad stops screaming long before the Hungry Thing cracks his bones, greedily sucking marrow out until a gnawed pile of ivory litters the bedroom, licked clean of blood, stripped of all the soft flesh and gristle alike. Jack cries when he shows up, but his screams are cut short by the swipe of colorless fingers over his face, now claws, and he disappears into the monster’s belly, too.

 

He was a big meal to stomach, but the Hungry Thing stays Hungry  _ Hungry Hungry Hungry _ and slobber waterfalls between his fangs. He looks down at his snarling belly and instead of smooth flesh he is just bones and taut skin stretched over them, thinning and shriveling into a disfigured ghoul of a corpse as his stomach digests him from the inside out, still  _ Empty Hungry Empty Starving Starving  _ **_Starving—_ **

 

Danny awakes not with a cry or howl of despair but a tiny, strangled sob. He cups his hands over his mouth to muffle his whimpers, afraid to wake any others in the house. He bites his lip until he bleeds, and the thick taste of ichor on his tongue makes Danny retch. He closes his eyes and panics quietly until his feelings are spent, bled out of him like the blood from his father’s savaged face in the dream, the nightmare.

 

_ Repress it. Don’t think about it. Done. _

 

He knows it isn’t healthy, and Jazz would tear him a new one if he ever disclosed the severity, but Danny almost likes this sort of dissociation—the kind that makes him float warmly above himself while his body moves on autopilot. Not the panicky, terrified episodes that make him shake and retch—when they’re deliberate, his detachments are borderline  _ pleasant _ . He doesn’t have to worry about managing his feelings when he isn’t feeling things at all. 

 

He spends a long time just lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, tracing the lines of his own scars with absent fingers. When nature calls he gets up, but he refuses to allow any clearing of the fog in his brain, clinging to it instead like a lifeline. He floats like this through his morning ablutions, in a sort of dark playground of guilty relief. Danny plans on staying this way, ensconced in a comfortable haze. He wastes time after dressing to play video games in his room, not yet willing to emerge and face the inevitable aftermath of the past few days.

 

This is something Danny hates to admit that he cultivates, but a treacherous little voice in the back of his head worries about what he might feel if he didn’t. What he might  _ do _ if he didn’t.

 

It is only after he spends a solid ten minutes staring dead-eyed at the game over screen on his old Biofear save that Danny thinks he might need to come back down. So he pads over the carpet in the hall to Jazz’s room, feeling naked outside the safety of his Lair. The door is locked, and he presses an ear against its grainy surface. Danny can hear her heartbeat when he focuses; it’s too slow for her to be awake, so he phases easily through the wood and into her room.

 

Jazz doesn’t usually  _ sprawl _ in any context, but she’s doing so now, spread-eagle with blankets draped halfway over her midriff, one hand clutching her pillowcase and the other splayed across her belly. In the soft mid-morning light Danny can see deep marks of exhaustion carved under her eyes, and she breathes in deep and slow in her sleep; thoroughly enervated by the ordeal of the past few days.

 

Guilt prickles down the back of Danny’s neck at the sight, spidering around his sensitive throat and making him shiver. Jazz is unharmed save a few small cuts and bruises, but her strength is flagging—and still she insists on pouring it into supporting him beyond her means. It seems too often that he can’t help but siphon the vigor and zeal from all the people around him, entangling them in his web of lies and violence like some kind of emotional blood-sucker. Jazz would berate him for thinking so, but he knows it’s true. 

 

Danny will never cease to be grateful for her enduring help, but he knows that she cares for him largely out of guilt. He can see it in her fleeting looks of fear and pity when his core stretches beyond its vessel and taints the air around him, when her eyes look wet as he snaps up meals of sour lab ectoplasm. She tells him it’s her responsibility as his big sister to look out for him and keep her little brother safe, but Danny can see easily through her light-voiced lies when her heartbeat spikes and the air around her tastes of shame. It’s not  _ fair _ to make her suffer for his mistakes, but refusal always feels too cruel.

 

He floats a little, settling feather-light on the bed beside her. The heat of her body next to his makes Danny feel a little safer, a little more alive, but as he folds his arms beneath him he thinks he hates this kind of introspection. Her breaths are slow and relaxed, eyes shut loose and expression slack with sleep. Good. No nightmares.

 

For an indeterminate amount of time Danny just sits there with hooded eyes and tired limbs tucked beneath him, gaze fixed dazedly on his sister’s sleeping form, only wavering to glance defensively at the door, ears pricked for footsteps or outside breathing. He can’t help the desire to preen her every once in a while, still probably far more often than is healthy; pushing her unkempt hair back, kissing her forehead, kneading the blankets around her and tucking them just so about her arms. It makes him feel like he’s doing something, even small, to pay her back.

 

Danny doesn’t remember a time that Jazz hasn’t woken before him, but it’s not until warm yellow light is sifting through the curtains that she finally stirs. It’s only slowly at first; she groans quietly, stretching and splaying her toes as she does. She huffs tiredly through her nose, cracking her eyes and blinking wearily up at her brother. 

 

For a long moment she just stares, uncomprehending and clouded with sleep, but then she sits up at a stark ninety-degree angle, abruptly enough to make Danny yelp and jump off the bed. She flails a little, kicking blindly at her encumbering sheets, before recognition dawns in her eyes and she blinks herself into wakefulness.

 

“Jeez!” She cries, wiping grit from her eyes as she swings her legs over the bed. “Gave me a heart attack, Danny. What’re you doing in my room?”

 

He shrugs noncommittally. “No reason. Couldn’t sleep.”

 

Jazz narrows her eyes at him until they’re nearly slits, getting to her feet and pulling him up to meet her. “Bad dream?” She asks at length, pinning her brother with a vaguely scolding look of scrutiny.

 

“Am I really that obvious?” He can’t help but whine, dragging his hands over his face. “Seriously, it’s not that big a deal, I swear.”

 

“You,” Jazz tells him, rummaging through her closet for something clean and comfortable to wear, “are about as subtle as a boulder in a haystack, little brother.” She does an about face, marching back to her bed to lay out her clothes. “It almost always helps to talk about it,” she continues. “In the mood to try?”

 

Danny wilts, chewing his lip, and that’s all the answer his sister needs.

 

Her scrutinizing expression softens, and she puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna force you so soon. Just know I’m here, okay?”

 

He nods, offering a drawn smile that he knows falls far short of reaching his eyes. “Thanks,” mumbles Danny. “Sorry for sneakin’ into your room, by the way. I didn’t wanna be alone… but nobody else could really… do it, I guess.”

 

Jazz hums in affirmation. “I’m not complaining,” she clarifies, half-teasing. “I think you more than deserve some sleepy morning cuddles when you need them.” Then, her tone turns slightly serious. “And you need them.”

 

Danny manages only a strangled fraction of a laugh before the sound splinters and dies in his throat, replaced by a nervous whine that slips out against his will. “I do,” he agrees feebly.

 

He watches as Jazz unplugs her cell phone and turns on the display, stifling a yawn as she does. “Ugh,” she groans, “it’s almost ten.” She turns to face Danny, sighing, “Here—step out so I can get dressed and cleaned up like a person, and then we can go get some breakfast, okay?”

 

“Okay,” he approves, and phases back out through the door without another word, settling into a frog-crouch against the wall as he waits. He listens to the soft rustle of Jazz’s clothes, the quiet padding of her feet on the floor as she moves about her room, and the soft swishing noise that accompanies the brushing of her hair. He’s never paid those sounds any mind before now, but at the moment he’s glad they’re there to ground him through the silence and distract him from his treacherous thoughts.

 

Jazz emerges from her room shortly after in a loose sweater and leggings, slightly more casual than her usual slacks and cardigan-over-dress shirt. Her socks make soft  _ whump _ sounds on the carpet, and she helps Danny up to his feet with a sigh.

 

“Anything you want in particular?” asks Jazz, voice tender and low.

 

Danny can only shrug. “Whatever you’re having is fine,” he replies, hardly above a whisper.

 

He trails her downstairs and into the kitchen, obediently grabbing things from the sparse cabinets and fridge as Jazz puts together a meager breakfast. They need to go grocery shopping, he notes, because what little milk remaining is sour, and just about everything else edible is in short supply. Some leftover takeout is pressed into the corner of the bottom shelf, but it’s reached a critical mass of mixed ectoplasm concentration and age that the contents of the cartons are reduced to little more than sour green slop, inedible even to Danny.

 

Besides, it wouldn’t be breakfast, even if it was good to eat, and the routine of cooking together soothes both teens involved. The food isn’t fancy; scrambled eggs with cheese and frozen spinach split onto two plates, bland deli ham for Jazz and contaminated bacon for Danny, but it’s a group effort, and it’s warm. Each has a cup of coffee, Danny’s black and his sister’s loaded with cream and sugar, and they quietly clink their mugs together once they’ve sat themselves down.

 

“What’s today?” Danny asks through a mouthful of eggs, peering expectantly at his sister over his plate.

 

She answers without hesitating, “Saturday,” but then, rather conspicuously, turns on her phone to check under the table. “Yeah, Saturday.”

 

Dad usually cooks on the weekends, he remembers bitterly. He makes delicious pancakes, all fluffy and covered in homemade blueberry sauce, and he sings—as awfully as his cooking is excellent—in the kitchen while he works. Not this time around, though. The only sound is the quiet tinkling of forks on ceramic and anxious swallowing at the table, so there’s nothing to mask the distant sounds of activity in the lab downstairs.

 

“Anyway,” says Jazz, a bit awkwardly. “Anything still hurting you?”

 

The young halfa shakes his head. “Not really. My shoulder’s still tight but the towel helped a lot last night—thanks for that, by the way.”

 

She nods, looking him over, then down to his empty plate. “Of course. Are you—erm, full?”

 

Danny cocks a brow at her. “I ate a lot,” he tells Jazz, a bit evasively. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, not one bit, but he can tell from the look on her face that his sister has no plans to yield.

 

“It wasn’t that much now, the rest was yesterday, and you know that’s not what I meant.” She should damn well know better than to push it right now. Danny resists the urge to bare his teeth, if only because gnarring her into submission would reflect poorly on his mental health.

 

“Yes, I’m full,” he sighs. “If I see any more ectoplasm this week I’m gonna be sick.” He means only half of the promise. “How did you sleep?” He asks, cutting himself off from confessing anything that might worry her.

 

Jazz shrugs. “Fine,” she replies, pushing a clump of spinach around on her plate with disinterest. “And you?”

 

Danny hesitates, and he knows that speaks volumes, so he discards his previous plan and outright admits it: “Okay for the most part, but bad at the end. Dream woke me up so I came into your room, but it’s no big deal.”

 

“Neither of us believe that,” says Jazz, a twinge of irritation entering her voice. “You don’t have to talk about it, but at least admit when you need the help. I’m here for a reason.”

 

He bites back a laugh, bitter and weak. “You’re here ‘cause you live here,” he tells her over his shoulder as he deposits his plate in the sink. “And I know; I need the help—but I’m not ready, so drop it.”

 

“Okay.” She pushes her chair out and comes up beside him, kissing him on the cheek. “I love you, little brother.”

 

“I’m taller than you,” Danny points out, but puts his arms around her all the same. “But I love you too. Thank you.”

 

“How did your talk go with Mom?” She asks, carding her fingers a bit absently through his hair.

 

Danny stiffens despite himself, casting his gaze down to the tiled floor. “Fine,” he tells her. “I think we made progress.”

 

Jazz arches a brow, looking hopeful. “How so?”

 

Her probing questions annoy him, really, but she’s so damn gentle and sweet about asking them that Danny feels bad in refusing to answer. “She said she wants me to be happy,” he relays. “Even though she doesn’t understand.” He scoffs, allowing a small growl to rumble out of his chest. “Took the scenic route getting there, though. Kept saying she could find a way to fix me.”

 

“And what do you think of that?”

 

Danny shrugs helplessly against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. “I wanna believe her. I want things to be better.” He glances up to meet his sister’s gaze, wavering pitifully, “Is it wrong that I’m still afraid?”

 

“No,” Jazz all but whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading and sticking with me through this!! i was thinking of maybe doing a fanart contest? illustrate (a) scene(s) from this fic and get featured, maybe a cameo, something like that? tell me what you think :3
> 
> you can always support me on patreon as well if you want to help keep me kicking! [http://patreon.com/dweeblet]


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